PERSONAL 
PREJUDICES 


M^RCLIPSTON  STURGIS 


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PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


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M»R-CLIPSTON  STURGIS 


THE  RANDOM  REFLECTIONS 

OFA 
GRANDMOTHER 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

THE  RIVERSIDE  PRESS  CAMBRIDGE 


COPYRIGHT,    1920,    BY    ESTHER   MARY    STURGIS 
ALL   RIGHTS   RRSERVED 


TO 
HARRIET  LOCKWOOD  CARTER 

HER  MOTHER  AND  MINE 

HER  GRANDMOTHER  AND  MINE 

I  DEDICATE  THIS  LITTLE  BOOK  IN  MEMORY  OF 

THE  UNBROKEN  FRIENDSHIP  OF 

THREE  GENERATIONS 


PREFACE 
BY  THE  AUTHOR'S  HUSBAND 

THE  woman  who  wrote  this  book  is  a 
past-mistress  in  the  arts  of  her  sex; 
delicate  flattery  and  gross  exaggeration 
come  with  equal  facility.  I  fancy  she  was 
tired  of  writing  the  book  before  she  had 
finished  the  last  chapter  (or  the  first,  I 
forget  which),  so,  when  her  publisher  sug 
gested  adding  a  preface,  she  at  once  turned 
her  attention  to  me. 

She  began  with  the  familiar  phrase,  "  Do 
you  love  me,  dear?"  and  I  promptly  re 
plied,  "  Not  if  it's  upstairs."  Then  followed 
the  usual  process  of  persuasion  on  her  part 
and  clumsy,  futile  effort  to  escape  on  my 
part.  From  the  first  gentle  phrase  until  my 
complete  acknowledgement  of  defeat,  there 
was  not  the  shadow  of  a  doubt  about  the 
result.  I  would  do  what  I  was  told  to  do, 
and  do  it  with  a  cheerful  countenance.  The 
attack  (after  that  gentle  opening  phrase) 
began  something  like  this:  "I  have  always 
vii 


PREFACE 

admired  the  way  you  work  on  the  train;  I 
think  your  ability  to  concentrate  in  such  a 
place  is  marvellous."  It  seems  absurd,  but 
you  know  how  it  is ;  this  indelicate  flattery 
made  me  feel  that  my  fine  qualities  were 
really  appreciated,  and  although  this  sim 
ple  little  method  had  been  applied  over  and 
over  again,  it  was  just  as  effective  as  if  it 
were  brand-new.  Well,  it  is  no  use  going  on 
and  explaining  this  familiar  process;  it  is, 
I  fancy,  not  unfamiliar  to  the  male  readers 
of  this  book,  and  it  explains  why  I  am 
writing  this  preface. 

Let  me  say  at  the  outset,  with  her  fa 
vourite  ascription  of  'Thank  the  pigs," 
that  this  book  at  least  is  not  about  me,  and 
I  shall  not  be  looked  upon  as  pusillanimous 
because  I  do  not  apply  for  a  divorce,  or 
even  enter  a  suit  for  libel,  as  was  the  case 
with  her  first  venture.  We  all  like  to  feel 
that  we  have  our  private  virtues,  but  from 
the  first  page  of  that  book  to  the  last  there 
was  no  privacy  left.  My  innocent  love  of 
the  country,  my  kindness  to  and  thought- 
fulness  for  her  (for  after  the  first  twenty- 
viii 


PREFACE 

five  years  of  country  summers  I  no  longer 
insisted  upon  her  accompanying  me),  my 
cheerful  acquiescence  in  her  long  absences, 
even  across  the  water,  all  were  as  nothing 
compared  to  her  desire  to  see  me  writhe 
under  her  facile  wit. 

So,  thank  the  pigs,  I  say,  I  am  out  of  it 
this  time,  and  others  take  my  place.  I  can 
therefore  cheerfully  recommend  this  book 
to  any  readers.  It  is  not  immoral,  and 
therefore  not  really  modern ;  but  I  have  an 
idea  that  we  are  returning  to  a  saner  point 
of  view,  and  good  and  homely  qualities  are 
once  more  coming  in  for  their  share  of 
attention.  This  prohibition  craze  is  one  of 
the  symptoms  of  returning  health;  we  are 
all  apt  to  overdo  things  when  we  are  carried 
away  by  an  idea,  and  a  little  purging,  like 
the  blood-letting  of  an  earlier  generation, 
will  do  no  harm.  We  old  folk  will  manage 
to  get  along,  and  the  next  generation,  or 
the  next  after,  will  return  to  a  sane  tem 
perance. 

So  this  book  is  quite  harmless;  any  one 
can  use  it  with  propriety;  even  those  who 

ix 


CONTENTS 

PREFACE  BY  THE  AUTHOR'S  HUSBAND  vii 

I.  GARDENS  i 

II.  HUSBANDS  AND  HOUSEKEEPING  19 

III.  AUTRES  TEMPS,  AUTRES  MCEURS  37 

IV.  THE  LOST  ART  OF  LETTER- WRITING  53 
V.  MY  BOLSHEVIST  71 

VI.  OLD  FRIENDS  93 

VII.  NEW  ACQUAINTANCES  121 

VIII.  HOUSE  AND  HOME  137 

IX.  QUALITY  VERSUS  EQUALITY  167 

X.  DIFFERENCES  AND  DISTINCTIONS  189 

EPILOGUE  BY  THE  FAVOURITE  NEPHEW  217 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 

I 
GARDENS 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 
I 

GARDENS 

A  FRIEND  has   submitted  to  me  for 
criticism  a  manuscript,  the   subject- 
matter  of  which  deals  with  Gardens.  Not 
just  plain  gardens,  you  understand,   but 
Gardens,  with  a  capital. 

I  am  a  good  deal  flattered  by  this  trib 
ute  of  its  author  to  my  sense  of  honour 
able  impartiality,  because  my  views  on  the 
subjects  of  the  country  in  general  and 
gardens  in  particular  are  not  looked  upon 
writh  the  respect  that  I  feel  to  be  their  due. 
I  seem  to  have  given  the  impression  that 
because  I  object  to  the  necessity  of  taking 
a  train  journey  to  town  every  day  I  do  not 
love  the  country,  and  because  I  dislike  the 
smell  of  manure  I  must  perforce  have  a 
repugnance  to  flowers.  I  prefer  not  to 
argue  the  matter.  I  merely  state  my  con 
viction  that  just  because  I  stand  aside 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


from  a  too  intimate  association  with  the 
country  on  the  one  hand,  and  do  not  per 
sonally  tackle  the  manure-heap  on  the 
other,  my  judgement  with  regard  to  both 
is  unquestionably  the  less  prejudiced  and 
more  impartial.  In  fact,  I  claim  that 
breadth  of  vision  which,  proverbially,  is 
impossible  of  attainment  when  there  is  a 
too  great  familiarity.  I  also  vehemently 
deny  the  accusation  of  my  friends  that  my 
breadth  of  vision  precludes  the  possibility 
of  any  knowledge  of  such  matters,  and  I 
deeply  resent  their  implication  that,  for  the 
same  reason,  my  judgement  in  all  other 
affairs  of  this  world  is  thereby  necessarily 
impaired. 

I  had  an  argument  about  this  the  other 
day  with  a  dear  friend,  whose  kindly  heart 
is  much  troubled  over  my  delinquencies 
in  many  matters  other  than  gardens  and 
the  country.  In  a  cosy,  tea-table  discussion 
of  our  various  friends,  she  expressed  warmly 
her  approbation  of  those  who  made  a  prac 
tice  of  spending  every  week-end  through 
out  the  winter  at  their  country  places, 


GARDENS 


saying  that  she  thought  it  such  a  healthy 
and  wholesome  thing  to  do.  I  made  no  rash 
admissions,  but  told  her  I  would  grant  her 
this  simply  for  the  sake  of  argument ;  and 
even  if  such  were  true,  what  in  the  world 
had  my  feelings  with  regard  to  the  country 
got  to  do  with  my  opinions  regarding  the 
restlessness  of  the  human  race?  I  tried  to 
point  out  to  her  that  my  conclusions  might 
be  the  same  if  the  people  who  lived  in  the 
country  took  to  spending  their  Sundays  in 
town,  only  I  should  feel  that  it  would  be 
less  of  a  change  and  excitement  for  them, 
as  they  spend  most  of  the  t  week  in  town 
anyway.  I  offered  all  this  humbly,  just  as 
a  possible  one  among  a  number  of  different 
opinions,  but  she  would  have  none  of  it, 
and  turning  her  conveniently  deaf  ear, 
she  left  me,  quite  convinced  that  because 
I  am  accused  of  not  loving  the  country, 
there  is  nothing  of  orthodoxy  about  me. 
As  her  opinion  is  shared  by  the  majority  of 
my  small  world,  I  live  a  life  bowed  down 
by  obloquy;  consequently  the  subtle  flat 
tery  of  my  friend,  the  author  of  the  manu- 

5 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


script  in  question,  is  all  the  more  gratifying, 
and  I  am  convinced  that  he  has  written  a 
most  charming  and  valuable  article. 

I  am  not  sure  that  I  am  entirely  quali 
fied  to  soar  to  the  empyrean  heights  to 
which  he  would  carry  his  readers  for,  start 
ing  with  the  Garden  of  Eden,  he  ends  up 
with  a  satisfactory  resting-place  for  his 
soul.  I  have  pondered  over  his  theories, 
and  I  believe  that  I  can  meet  him  in  his 
conclusions,  though  my  path  to  that  de 
sirable  end  may  not  be  identical.  I  truly 
feel  that  if  all  gardens  behave  as  do  those 
in  which  I  take  a  personal,  if  vicarious, 
interest,  they  must  be  excellent  discipline 
for  anybody's  soul. 

I  have  seen  my  husband  dig  in  the 
earth  with  his  own  hands,  in  order  to  save 
the  cost  of  paid  labour,  till  the  honest 
sweat  poured  from  his  brow  and  his  hands 
were  blistered,  only  to  find  that  nothing 
short  of  a  seventy-five-dollar  load  of  ma 
nure  would  render  his  plot  of  ground  habit 
able  for  the  flowers  he  wished  to  grow.  I 
have  seen  a  friend  arise  at  4.30  A.M.  day 
6 


GARDENS 


after  day  of  glorious  summer  morns,  to 
tend  with  sleepless  care  her  charming  and 
very  large  garden  of  old-fashioned  and 
sweet-smelling  flowers,  only  to  find,  when 
at  its  height  of  bloom  and  beauty,  that  it 
has  been  attacked  and  exterminated  in  a 
single  night  by  battalions  of  moles.  I  have 
seen  my  sister  industriously  plant  blue 
asters,  only  to  have  them  come  up  a  pe 
culiarly  unpleasant  admixture  of  purple 
pink  and  magenta.  Even  I  have  had  my 
own  personal  experiences. 

I  was  called  upon  by  a  despairing  friend, 
one  very  hot  day,  to  fill,  with  two  or  three 
dozen  plants  of  the  last-named  variety,  a 
yawning  hole  in  her  garden  caused  by  one 
or  another  of  the  many  vicissitudes  at 
tendant  upon  the  joys  of  gardening.  It 
was  warm  —  oh,  very  warm;  the  kind  of 
weather  in  which  even  to  sit  still  induces 
a  healthful  activity  of  the  pores,  but  I 
was  fond  of  my  friend,  and  very  sorry  for 
her. 

The  three  dozen  infant  plants  were  pre 
sented  to  me  in  a  large  basket,  heavy  writh 

7 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


the  implements  attendant  upon  their  birth 
into  the  garden  world.  I  lugged  them  across 
the  spacious  lawn  and  down  the  long  garden 
path,  and,  mopping  my  brow,  I  dwelt  in 
thought  upon  the  loveliness  of  the  little 
baby  buds,  just  pinkly  ready  to  burst  into 
flower.  I  mused  upon  their  poetic  mission 
to  beautify  toil  and  rehabilitate  with 
bloom  the  waste  places  of  the  earth,  and 
as  I  toiled  I  pictured  the  brave  show  that 
would  greet  the  envious  eyes  of  the  mem 
bers  of  the  Garden  Club  at  their  meeting  a 
few  days  hence. 

My  task  was  not  brief,  and  was  not 
accomplished  without  much  mental  and 
physical  discipline,  but  at  its  end  I  sur 
veyed  my  work  with  pride  and  admiration. 
I  felt  that  I  had  earned  a  rest,  and  retired 
to  the  bathtub  with  a  strong  conviction 
that  I  had  acquired  much  merit.  Two  brief 
hours  later,  cooled  off  and  refreshed  in 
body  and  temper,  I  revisited  the  scene  of 
my  labours.  Every  single  one  of  those 
sturdy  little  plants  had  been  eaten,  by  the 
grasshoppers,  down  to  within  an  inch  of 
8 


GARDENS 


the  ground.  No  wonder  my  friend  the 
author  writes  feelingly:  "Only  in  the  gar 
den  that  we  plant  with  our  tired  hands 
and  water  with  the  tears  of  frequent  dis 
appointment,  can  we  gather  the  flower  of 
a  responsive  soul."  I  feel  just  that  way 
about  it  myself. 

My  friend  writes  feelingly  and  from  the 
heart,  for  he  has  a  charming  garden  of  his 
own.  From  the  doorsteps  of  his  picturesque 
white  cottage  drop  three  slightly  intoxi 
cated  but  truly  friendly  little  terraces,  each 
with  its  special  duty  to  perform.  The  first 
is  the  custodian  of  two  ancient  hawthorn 
trees,  said  to  have  been  in  existence  when 
Louis-Philippe  abode  for  a  time  in  the 
modest  obscurity  of  this  humble  home. 
The  legend  runs  that  branches  of  these,  in 
full  bloom,  were  sent  to  him  in  Paris  on  a 
later  and  more  public  occasion,  and  my 
practical  mind  wonders  as  to  their  con 
dition  upon  arrival,  after  a  voyage  the 
length  of  which  must  have  rivalled  in  time 
that  of  the  boats  of  these  post-war  days. 
One  of  the  trees  is  pink,  the  other  white, 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


and  when  they  burst  simultaneously  into 
full  bloom,  their  dainty  loveliness  is 
equalled  only  by  their  perfume,  which  is 
of  such  a  nature  that  the  windows  of  the 
cottage  must  be  kept  closed  and  the  in 
habitants  thereof  hold  their  noses  when 
they  take  their  walks  abroad. 

From  these  ancient  sentinels  a  flight  of 
grey  stone  steps,  uncertain  as  to  pitch  or 
level,  lead  down  to  the  second  terrace 
which  is  the  home  of  the  flowers.  A  hedge 
of  English  box  guards  the  beds,  and  nobly 
strives  to  fulfil  its  duties  in  spite  of  many 
vicissitudes.  To  the  best  of  its  sturdy  abil 
ity  it  braves  the  north-east  storms  and 
sub-zero  temperature,  but  an  occasional 
plant  will  perforce  succumb  and  die,  leav 
ing  a  gap  like  that  of  a  lost  tooth.  Here, 
my  friend  lets  loose  his  love  for  flowers, 
and  from  the  lowly  pansy  he  riots  madly 
up  through  lilies,  poppies,  peonies,  and 
foxgloves  to  the  towering  blue  larkspur 
which  gives  the  final  obliterating  touch  to 
any  effect  of  terracing;  but,  as  he  wisely 
says,  "Anybody  writh  a  soul  prefers  a 
10 


GARDENS 


frenzy  of  flowers  to  a  sense  of  proportion"; 
and  he  is  quite  right. 

From  this  flowery  terrace  a  flight  of  six 
or  seven  steps,  that  aspire  to  better  level 
than  their  more  ancient  brethren  above, 
drop  to  the  third  terrace,  a  grassy  spot, 
permitted,  as  to  decoration,  only  an  edg 
ing  of  flowers  on  one  side.  It  is  surrounded 
by  a  lilac  hedge  some  eight  feet  in  height 
which,  being  subject  to  birth  control,  is 
not  permitted  to  flower,  and  so  devotes  all 
its  energies  to  growing  fat  and  flourishing. 
It  surrounds  a  good-sized  plot  of  lawn 
destined,  I  believe,  for  the  ancient  and 
honourable  game  of  bowls,  but  a  certain 
bumpiness  of  the  sward  seems  to  have 
discouraged  the  effort.  On  these  three 
fragrant  terraces  I  have  watched  my  friend 
dig  with  his  own  tired  hands  and  water 
with  the  tears  of  a  whole  lot  of  disappoint 
ments,  till  I  have  seen  that  responsive  soul 
rise  before  my  very  eyes.  It  looked  just 
like  mosquitoes. 

My  friend  is  of  a  poetic  temperament, 
which  leads  him  on  from  flight  to  further 

II 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


flight,  in  the  likening  of  the  lover  of  a 
garden  to  that  of  a  lover  to  his  maid. 
There  may  be  something  in  this  theory. 
He  speaks  of  the  "hectic  days  of  doubt," 
and  voices  in  chaste  metaphor  the  really 
intelligent  discovery  that  quite  often  what 
agrees  best  with  a  maid,  as  well  as  with  a 
garden,  is  to  be  let  alone  for  a  while  and 
not  to  be  bothered  with  too  many  atten 
tions.  Now  this  is  really  practical  and  to 
be  commended,  but  when  he  carries  out 
the  simile  to  its  logical  conclusions,  and 
compares  a  later  relationship  to  the  "se 
curity"  of  married  life,  I  don't  feel  so  sure 
about  it.  I  only  know  that  if  any  wife  of 
mine  behaved  with  the  exasperating  per 
versity  of  some  gardens,  my  present  views 
on  divorce  would  undergo  a  radical  change. 
I  can  quite  see  that  gardens  are  a  good 
deal  like  women  in  that  one  never  knows 
what  they  are  going  to  do,  but  while  I 
acknowledge  this  element  of  surprise  and 
unexpectedness  to  be  one  of  a  woman's 
chief  charms,  it  does  not  appeal  to  me  one 
bit  in  a  garden.  It  must  be  so  disconcerting 

12 


GARDENS 


to  plant  blue  asters  and  have  them  come 
up  magenta,  or  to  plant  celery  and  have  it 
turn  out  to  be  a  squash.  That  this  fre 
quently  happens  I  am  quite  sure  from  my 
experiences  with  the  vegetable  garden  at 
our  country  place,  in  which  my  husband 
takes  such  joy.  For  some  years  now  he  has 
industriously  planted  peas,  a  vegetable  to 
which  I  am  particularly  addicted,  and  of 
which  he  annually  promises  me  a  generous 
supply,  but  somehow  or  other,  by  the  time 
they  get  into  glass  jars  and  up  to  town, 
they  have  all  turned  into  string  beans. 

I  think  I  must  submit  this  manuscript 
to  a  particular  friend  of  mine  who  is  a 
farmer  —  a  real  one  —  and  get  his  opinion 
about  it,  for  I  am  sure  the  author  would  be 
benefited  by  the  criticism  of  a  practical 
gardener,  and  the  gardener  would  be  — 
well,  I  am  not  quite  sure  what  he  would  be, 
but  I  should  love  to  see  the  expression  of 
his  face  if  I  attempted  to  persuade  him 
that  his  cabbages  and  onions  had  souls.  I 
have  never  happened  to  meet  a  really  soul 
ful  grower  of  vegetables,  and  perhaps  this 

13 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


is  the  reason  why  my  author  friend  omits 
all  mention  of  kitchen  gardens  in  his  ele 
vating  article.  I  regret  the  omission  deeply, 
for  I  feel  that  I  could  be  led  to  wax  exactly 
as  poetic  over  green  peas  and  asparagus  as 
over  poppies  and  peonies.  If  I  could  have 
carried  something  of  the  kind  to  my  farmer 
friend,  it  might  cheer  up  his  outlook  upon 
life,  which  is  just  now  one  of  the  deepest 
pessimism.  I  tried  to  buy  a  few  cabbages 
from  him  last  autumn,  and  he  enquired 
sardonically  if  I  s' posed  he  was  goin'  to 
grow  kebbidges  when  every  durn  one  he 
riz  jumped  his  taxes  on  him.  It  took  a 
little  lightning  calculation  on  my  part  to 
connect  cause  and  effect,  but  when  he 
added  that  he  had  just  made  out  his 
income-tax  papers,  I  understood  and  sym 
pathized.  He  grew  quite  eloquent  beneath 
the  warmth  of  my  sympathy,  and  pro 
ceeded  to  explain  matters  from  his  point 
of  view. 

"Now,  you  jest  look  at  that  there  keb- 
bidge,"  he  pleaded.  "  It  takes  me  and  three 
other  farm-hands  to  raise  it  so's  it'll  be 

14 


GARDENS 


like  what  it  oughter  be  —  a  good,  self- 
respectin'  kebbidge,  so  to  speak;  where 'm 
I  goin'  to  get  the  men  to  work?  An'  if  I  get 
'em,  how  in  thunder 'm  I  goin'  to  pay 'em 
the  wages  they  want?  More'n  that,"  he 
continued,  "by  the  time  that  kebbidge 
gets  to  the  table  o'  any  o'  you  city  folk,  it 
'11  ha'  ben  handled  by  six  other  fellers  after 
it  leaves  my  farm,  an'  every  dum  one  of 
'em  gets  more  out  o'  that  kebbidge  than 
either  you  or  me  ever  does." 

This  was  coming  down  to  practicalities 
with  a  bump. 

"What  are  you  going  to  do  about  it?"  I 
enquired. 

He  shifted  his  quid  of  tobacco  and  so 
surprised  a  potato-bug  strolling  on  the  cab 
bage  in  question,  that  it  tumbled  off  back 
wards.  "Nothin',"  he  replied  laconically. 

"But  in  that  case,"  I  wailed,  "where 
shall  I  get  my  cabbages?" 

"Grow  'em  yourself,"  was  the  firm  reply; 
"it's  what  all  the  folks '11  have  to  be  doin' 
pretty  soon." 

Evidently  the  practical  farmer  under- 

15 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


estimates  that  joy  in  labour,  which  is  pic 
tured  by  the  author  when  he  attributes  to 
Adam  and  Eve  a  growing  satisfaction  in 
work  after  their  expulsion  from  Eden.  My 
personal  experience  with  farm-hands  is 
limited,  but  I  can  quite  understand  that 
they  seldom  burst  into  poetic  paraphrase 
upon  the  birth  of  a  carrot,  and  I  am  per 
fectly  certain  that  posterity,  in  any  line 
of  labour,  is  scandalously  content  to  "eat 
dates"  whenever,  and  for  just  so  long,  as 
they  are  paid  for  doing  so.  I  think  that  on 
the  whole  it  would  be  better  not  to  show 
my  author  friend's  article  to  my  farmer 
friend ;  I  am  afraid  he  would  not  appreciate 
it.  I  shall  send  it  instead  to  the  Department 
of  Internal  Revenue  in  Washington  where 
they  are  even  more  sadly  in  need  of  souls. 

In  his  closing  paragraph  my  friend  the 
author  attempts  to  carry  me  into  a  realm 
of  imagery  where  I  am  incapable  of  follow 
ing.  He  writes: 

"Delights  and  discouragements,  rewards 
and  failures,  smiles  and  tears,  these  are  the 
elements  out  of  which  is  created  the  soul  of 
16 


GARDENS 


a  garden,  and  as  each  is  met  with  patience 
and  humour,  work  and  play,  we  find  that 
we,  in  turn,  have  found  the  garden  of  our 
souls." 

I  am  sure  that  this  is  a  perfectly  beauti 
ful  thought,  but  as  I  labour  to  reduce  it  to 
a  working  formula,  I  find  myself  helplessly 
perplexed.  Am  I  to  create  a  soul  for  my 
garden,  and  then  go  and  plant  my  own 
ready-made  soul  alongside  it?  I  should  hes 
itate  to  do  that  because,  after  my  personal 
and  vicarious  experiences,  I  should  feel  no 
certainty  as  to  what  my  soul  would  come 
up  after  I  had  planted  it.  I  might  plant  my 
pure,  white,  woman's  soul,  and  then,  like 
those  blue  asters  that  came  up  magenta, 
it  might  come  up  a  pink  he-devil.  For 
tunately  I  am  not  gardening  just  at  present, 
and  there  is  plenty  of  time  to  consult  my 
friend  about  this. 

It  is  a  good  article,  though,  and  I  shall 
certainly  advise  its  publication. 


II 

HUSBANDS  AND  HOUSEKEEPING 


I  HAVE  just  returned  from  a  delightful 
summer  vacation.  For  two  glorious 
months  I  have  repudiated  my  family,  my 
town  house  and  my  country  house,  and 
have  sat  placidly  in  the  homes  of  various 
hospitable  friends  and  relatives,  watching 
with  an  interest,  not  untinged  with  vindic 
tive  glee,  their  wrestlings  with  the  various 
problems,  domestic  and  other,  which  beset 
my  own  path  through  these  days  of  ques 
tionable  peace. 

I  refrain  from  mentioning  the  condition 
in  which  I  found  my  town  residence  when 
I  regretfully  obeyed  an  inconvenient  con 
science  and  returned  to  duty.  In  a  weak 
moment  I  had  yielded  to  the  pleadings  of 
my  men-folk  to  allow  them  "just  to  sleep 
in  the  house"  throughout  the  week.  "Who 
will  make  your  beds?"  I  enquired.  "Oh, 
we  will  make  them  ourselves,"  was  the 
eager  reply.  I  have  seen  beds  made  by 

21 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


"ourselves"  before,  and  regarded  those 
two  men  with  a  stern  and  ironic  eye,  but 
their  faces  showed  such  pathetic  pleading 
that  I  hesitated  and  \vas  lost.  Untrue  to 
every  principle  within  me,  I  compromised. 
I  procured  the  services  of  the  caretaker  of 
a  neighbouring  house  to  come  to  my  as 
sistance,  and  she  contracted  to  make  the 
two  beds,  restore  to  their  proper  bars  the 
bath-towels  that  a  man  invariably  hangs 
up  on  the  floor,  and  to  keep  clean  a  limited 
section  of  two  dressing-tables.  I  said  noth 
ing,  either  to  her  or  to  my  men-folk,  about 
keeping  the  windows  closed  during  the  day 
in  order  to  keep  out  the  dust,  because  I 
knew  full  well  that  in  one  case  it  would  be 
a  mere  waste  of  breath,  and  in  the  other 
would  probably  be  regarded  as  too  much 
work.  I  judged  upon  my  return  that  they 
had  remained  permanently  open  through 
out  the  months  of  July  and  August. 

We  have  lived  in  this  house  a  good  many 
years,  and  owing  to  war  and  other  exi 
gencies  we  have  not  been  able  to  keep  it  up 
as  we  could  wish,  consequently  dilapida- 

22 


HUSBANDS  AND  HOUSEKEEPING 

tion  verged  upon  decay,  and  repairs  ne 
cessitated  the  presence  of  workmen  in 
pretty  much  every  room  in  the  house.  I 
have  been  married  some  forty  years  now, 
and  I  ought  to  have  known  better,  but  I 
was  weak-minded  enough  to  urge  my  hus 
band  to  get  the  work  started  in  good  sea 
son.  Also  I  was  so  ill-advised  as  to  allude, 
just  once,  in  my  letters  to  him  throughout 
the  weeks  of  my  absence,  to  some  rugs 
that  were  to  be  sent  to  the  cleaners.  I  re 
ceived  in  reply  one  of  those  I-must-bear- 
with-her- patiently  letters  saying,  "PLEASE 
don't  WORRY  about  those  rugs;  they  have 
gone."  They  had;  but  they  didn't  come 
back  till  I  went  after  them.  Most  of  the 
repairs  were  partly  finished  upon  my  re 
turn,  which  is  doing  pretty  well  for  a  man, 
but  they  did  not  begin  to  work  on  the 
furnace  —  which  necessitated  running  new 
pipes  up  through  the  house  -  -  until  after 
I  had  cleaned  the  two  top  floors.  I  finally 
got  the  workmen  out  and  the  house  fit  to 
live  in,  but  there  are  times  when  I  feel  that 
house-cleaning  is  an  unappreciated  phi- 

23 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


lanthrophy.  I,  personally,  with  my  own 
hands,  cleaned  some  fifteen  hundred  of  the 
several  thousand  books  in  our  library.  I 
removed  them  singly  from  the  shelf,  wiped, 
on  both  sides,  top  and  bottom,  every  in 
dividual  book,  washed  the  shelf,  and  gave 
a  final  wipe  to  the  book  before  returning 
it  to  its  place,  and  when  I  had  finished, 
I  regarded  the  shining  rows  with  aching 
pride.  Upon  my  husband's  return  I  pointed 
out  to  him  my  achievement,  and  suggested 
a  few  changes  that  I  thought  might  be 
made  to  advantage  in  the  arrangement  of 
the  volumes.  He  quite  agreed  with  me, 
and  as  he  replaced  the  last  book  a  friend 
dropped  in  to  welcome  us  back  to  town. 
My  husband  went  forward,  all  charms  and 
smiles  to  greet  her.  "I  am  so  sorry  I  can't 
shake  hands,"  he  said,  waggling  his  hands 
suggestively  in  front  of  him,  "but  I  have 
just  been  handling  these  dirty  books." 

I  am  obliged  to  add  a  new  maid  to  my 
staff  this  year.  This  is  unfortunate  be 
cause  nobody  wants  to  go  into  domestic 
service  any  more;  however,  I  sent  out  my 

24 


HUSBANDS  AND  HOUSEKEEPING 

appeal  for  help.  The  first  applicant  rang 
the  doorbell,  and  I  opened  the  door  myself. 
The  figure  that  stood  there  wore  a  large 
hat,  with  feathers  of  such  dimensions  that 
my  eyes  involuntarily  measured  the  en 
trance  in  hasty  calculation.  A  rather  pleas 
ant  face  looked  out  from  beneath  the 
structure  on  her  head,  and  she  announced, 
a  little  questioningly :  "I'm  the  lady  that 
heard  help  was  wa-anted  here."  "Oh," 
said  I.  "Well,  I'm  the  woman  that  wants 
it.  Come  right  in." 

She  had  her  points,  so  I  engaged  her; 
this  was  Wednesday,  and  she  promised 
faithfully  to  come  on  the  following  Mon 
day.  Having  settled  the  matter  I  devoted 
my  mind  to  other  affairs,  not  omitting  an 
occasional  expression  of  gratitude  to  a 
kind  fate  that  had  placed  no  greater  diffi 
culties  in  my  way  of  obtaining  domestic 
assistance.  On  Saturday  afternoon  I  an 
swered  a  call  on  the  telephone.  "I'm  the 
wan  you  was  talkin'  to  the  other  day,  and 
I've  decided  not  to  come."  I  opened  my 
mouth  to  make  remarks,  but  promptly 

25 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


shut  it  again,  and  silently  hung  up  the 
receiver.  Really,  there  did  not  seem  to  be 
anything  to  say. 

My  next  applicant  was  a  very  nice-look 
ing  young  woman  who  had  never  "lived 
out  before,"  but  had  kept  house  for  an 
uncle.  She  was  entirely  untrained,  and 
admitted  quite  frankly  that  she  would 
have  to  be  taught  every  particular  of  do 
mestic  work,  but  of  course  the  wages  were 
to  be  the  same  as  those  of  a  perfectly 
trained  and  responsible  woman.  That  was 
inevitable,  and  I  agreed;  after  which  I 
considered  that  it  was  my  turn  to  make 
demands.  "What  wages  do  you  propose  to 
give  me  for  training  you?"  I  asked  with 
smiling  firmness.  "I  do  not  expect  you  to 
work  without  wages  —  why  should  you 
expect  me  to  do  so?"  That  young  person 
was  endowed  with  a  decent  sense  of  square 
dealing,  so  we  came  to  an  amicable  ar 
rangement  on  the  above  basis,  and  she 
promised  faithfully  to  come  to  me  bright 
and  early  on  the  morning  of  three  days 
hence.  I  spent  the  night  before  that  prom- 
26 


HUSBANDS  AND  HOUSEKEEPING 

ised  day  out  of  town,  and  I  arose  with  the 
lark  in  order  to  be  at  my  house  in  good 
time  to  receive  the  new  inmate.  I  arrived 
there  even  before  the  postman  who,  when 
he  came,  delivered  to  me  a  postcard  con 
taining  the  information  that  --  "My  sister 
won't  hear  on  me  living  in  the  city."  Truly, 
I  consider  it  quite  altruistic  on  my  part 
that  my  first  thought  should  have  been 
a  hasty  mental  survey  of  my  suburban 
friends  in  search  of  any  who  might  avail 
themselves  of  this  domestic  phenomenon. 
Usually  it  is  impossible  to  find  a  maid 
who  will  even  consider  living  out  of  town, 
and  most  of  my  friends  and  acquaintances 
who  love  the  country  so  much  that  they 
live  there,  are  doing  their  own  work. 

I  have  now  engaged  a  third  person,  who 
has  "faithfully  promised"  to  come  on  a 
certain  date,  but  I  have  no  reason  to  sup 
pose  that  she  will  do  so.  I  wonder  what  we 
are  going  to  do  about  it  all.  Most  of  us 
have  theories  on  the  subject,  and  many  of 
my  friends  have  various  suggestions  to 
offer  in  the  line  of  reform.  One  of  the  sug- 

27 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


gestions  is  a  plan  to  have  a  sort  of  factory- 
like  arrangement,  where  domestic  service 
will  be  carried  on  in  shifts  of  a  certain 
number  of  hours.  I  understand  that  one 
batch  would  come  in  and  work  two  or 
three  hours,  and  would  then  be  succeeded 
by  another  batch,  and  the  process  repeated 
until  the  employers  of  each  family-factory- 
force  are  ready  to  go  to  bed.  Of  course  this 
arrangement  might  conceivably  succeed  in 
getting  the  work  done,  after  a  fashion,  but 
it  does  n't  permit  much  of  the  human  ele 
ment  to  enter  in.  Heaven  knows,  there  is 
little  enough  personal  attachment  between 
servants  and  their  employers  as  it  is,  but 
if  this  sort  of  thing  obtained,  one  might 
just  as  well  be  served  by  a  hay  tedder  - 
and  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the  dinner 
dishes  would  be  handled  in  much  the  same 
fashion  as  is  the  hay.  Another  trouble 
would  be  that  one  could  never  remember 
the  names  of  the  individuals  of  some  four 
or  five  shifts  of  four  or  five  persons  each. 
I  am  already  getting  to  that  age  when  I 
begin  with  any  familiar  name,  and  go 
28 


HUSBANDS  AND  HOUSEKEEPING 

through  the  nomenclature  of  the  family 
till  I  inadvertently  strike  the  name  I  want: 
"Jenny  -  -  Bessie  -  -  Margaret  -  -  MARY." 
It  would  be  a  fearful  mental  effort  to  learn 
all  the  names  to  begin  with,  and  never  in 
the  world  could  I  find  time  to  go  through 
ten  or  fifteen  names  for  the  purpose  of  giv 
ing  an  order  in  a  hurry.  I  don't  know  what 
is  supposed  to  happen  if  one  is  taken  ill,  or 
needs  any  service  in  the  night.  I  only  know 
that  if  my  family  were  all  away,  I  should 
object  strenuously  to  sleeping  alone  in  the 
house,  and  that  under  no  circumstances 
whatever  could  I  be  induced  to  arise  from 
my  bed  and  crawl  through  the  unwarmed 
passages  of  a  dark  house  at  6.30  of  a  cold 
winter's  morning  for  the  purpose  of  ad 
mitting  the  first  shift  at  the  back  door. 
No.  I  have  no  opinion  at  all  of  that  plan 
for  the  betterment  of  domestic  difficulties. 
Personally  I  have  not  got  much  beyond 
theories  of  cause,  but  until  I  can  think  of 
some  better  suggestion  than  this,  I  make 
no  apologies  for  keeping  quiet. 

I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the  cause  may 
29 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


lie  partly  in  the  world-wide  spirit  of  unrest 
which  pervades  every  age  and  every  class, 
and  is  as  rampant  among  the  rich  as  with 
the  poor.  Youth  is  fidgety  beyond  ex 
pression,  and  we  older  ones  escape  it  only 
in  the  degree  to  which  we  are  lazy  or  en 
ergetic.  I  have  a  young  friend  who  could 
not  sit  still  for  five  minutes  if  she  tried.  She 
has  a  house  in  town,  a  house  in  the  country, 
where  they  often  spend  a  few  days,  and  a 
house  at  the  seaside,  where  they  frequently 
spend  Sundays.  And  she  has  let  her  town 
house  and  hired  another  around  the  cor 
ner  to  live  in.  I  enquired  about  her  domestic 
arrangements  with  a  good  deal  of  interest, 
but  she  did  not  seem  to  be  very  clear  in  her 
mind  about  them.  So  far  as  I  could  under 
stand,  a  telephone  operator  was  taking 
care  of  the  children.  I  was  anxious  to  know 
the  modus  operandi,  but  was  left  in  doubt 
as  to  whether  the  operator  had  left  her 
post  or  was  caring  for  the  children  by 
telephone. 

Personally,  I  find  it  bad  enough  to  take 
care  of  my  one  town  house  (I  have  shuffled 

30 


HUSBANDS  AND  HOUSEKEEPING 

off  the  care  of  my  country  house  on  to 
the  shoulders  of  my  favourite  niece)  and 
nothing  would  induce  me  to  own  three 
houses  and  hire  a  fourth.  I  passed  my 
young  friend  sitting  on  the  steps  of  her 
house  Number  Four,  gloomily  surveying 
a  procession  of  furniture  and  household 
effects  being  carried  in  at  the  front  door. 
She  was  arrayed  in  a  pair  of  green  knicker 
bockers  ineffectually  concealed  by  a  rain 
coat;  her  pretty  hair  curled  fluffily  against 
the  green  facing  of  her  hat,  and  the  ex 
pression  of  melancholy  that  overspread  her 
face  only  added  to  her  charms.  I  asked  if 
she  had  yet  succeeded  in  getting  a  cook. 
"No,"  she  replied  in  a  tone  of  hopeless 
discouragement,  "nobody  seems  to  want 
to  take  the  place."  I  was  deeply  sympa 
thetic  —  with  the  cook.  I  doubt  if  I  should 
like  that  situation,  myself. 

I  am  not  making  any  remarks  about  the 
wages  that  obtain  to-day,  the  sum  de 
manded  being  the  same  for  trained  and  un 
trained  work.  We  keep  as  few  maids  as 
possible  in  my  household,  and  in  order  to 

31 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


pay  them  we  go  without  all  the  other  neces 
saries  of  life.  I  have  not  bought  a  hat  for 
three  years  and  my  husband  has  not  had  a 
new  suit  of  clothes  since  the  year  of  our 
Lord  1914.  I  cannot  say  that  the  rise  of 
payment  for  labour  is  none  of  my  business, 
exactly,  but  I  decline  to  accept  any  re 
sponsibility  for  it;  it  has  been  none  of  my 
doing;  but  I  am  a  very  much  mistaken  old 
woman  if  the  labour  powers  that  be  do  not 
find,  some  day,  that  the  trained  workers  of 
all  industries  will  rise  up  and  forcibly  im 
press  upon  them  the  injustice  of  the  present 
rate  of  payment.  They  will  have  my  warm 
sympathy,  too.  For  a  well-trained,  well- 
mannered  parlour-maid,  for  instance,  who 
knows  all  the  ins  and  outs  of  her  work  and 
does  it  well,  to  feel  that  any  little  red 
headed,  snub-nosed  chit,  fresh  from  a  bog 
in  Ireland  or  anywhere  else,  can  demand 
and  get  exactly  the  same  wages  that  she 
herself  receives,  must  be  too  exasperating 
to  be  borne.  If  I  were  a  well-trained  serv 
ant,  I  would  not  put  up  with  it  for  one 
minute.  If  domestic-trained  labour  were  to 

32 


HUSBANDS  AND  HOUSEKEEPING 

make  a  stand  against  such  injustice,  we 
employers  would  be  none  the  worse  off  so 
far  as  money  is  concerned,  for  nine  out  of 
every  ten  employers  could  not  possibly 
afford  to  pay  a  penny  more  than  we  pay 
now,  so  we  should  be  obliged  to  content 
ourselves  with  untrained  work,  and  the 
trained  servant  would  be  obliged  either  to 
marry,  or  to  force  her  untrained  sister  into 
her  proper  place. 

I  am  occasionally  tempted  to  wish  that 
I  were  less  conservative  in  the  selection  of 
the  class  of  service  I  employ.  It  is  really  an 
obsession  to  feel  that  one  can  be  served 
only  by  certain  races,  of  a  certain  colour, 
and  an  approximately  similar  creed.  A  few 
of  my  acquaintances  are  broader-minded 
than  I,  and  in  their  frequent  chats  over  my 
afternoon  tea-table  wave  flauntingly  in  my 
face  their  one  Japanese  servant  who  is 
butler,  chambermaid  and  cook,  or  their 
Chinese  cook  who  is  an  equally  clever 
coiffeur,  but  I  don't  know;  somehow  or 
other  I  would  as  soon  think  of  engaging  a 
baboon  to  wait  upon  me.  Also,  I  observe 

33 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


that  they  come  to  our  house  for  meals  a 
great  deal  more  often  than  we  are  invited 
to  theirs. 

A  friend  of  mine  has  returned  to  first 
principles  and,  temporarily  at  all  events,  is 
at  rest.  She  has  a  large  farm  on  the  out 
skirts  of  a  small  town,  and  her  struggles 
with  the  domestic  problem  were  rapidly 
bringing  her  to  an  untimely  grave.  She  im 
ported  maids  from  Ireland,  she  brought 
them  over  from  England,  she  sought  them 
out  in  the  fastnesses  of  the  mountain  range 
that  looms  above  her  home,  but  each  ac 
quirement  was  more  incompetent,  and 
drove  her  more  nearly  distracted  than  the 
last.  She  has  Southern  affiliations,  so  it  was 
not  unnatural  that  in  her  desperation  her 
mind  should  have  turned  in  that  direction 
for  inspiration.  After  a  few  tentative  exper 
iments  she  succeeded  in  transplanting  a 
sort  of  "ole  Virginny  plantation  life"  into 
the  slightly  scandalized  environs  of  an 
abolition  town.  She  "owns"  a  middle-aged 
negress  who  adores  her  mistress,  believes  in 
a  personal  and  material  devil,  and  prefers 

34 


HUSBANDS  AND  HOUSEKEEPING 

to  do  the  greater  part  of  her  work  between 
the  hours  of  10  P.M.  and  midnight.  This 
invaluable  person  brought  with  her  three 
very  young  girls  of  willing  heart  and  ques 
tionable  relationship  to  her  and  to  each 
other.  For  each  and  all  of  these  young  rela 
tives  she  is  entirely  responsible,  and  if  they 
do  not  behave,  she  disciplines  them  with 
the  business  end  of  the  coal  shovel.  Her 
cooking  is  No.  I  A,  Southern,  and  if  the 
meals  are  not  served  with  that  meticulous 
attention  to  the  clock  that  obtains  in  the 
North,  they  are  without  question  worth 
waiting  for.  I  hastened  home  from  a  drive 
one  morning,  my  lips  framed  with  apolo 
gies  for  being  five  minutes  late  for  the  1.30 
luncheon  hour,  and  was  met  by  my  hostess 
with  a  serene  smile.  "  I  am  afraid  luncheon 
will  be  a  few  moments  late  to-day,"  she 
said  unapologetically ;  "Rose  has  just  gone 
out  to  the  garden  to  pick  the  corn."  We  sat 
down  to  our  meal  at  2.20,  but  any  one  who 
had  the  privilege  of  eating  that  dish  of 
baked  corn  was  oblivious  of  time  or  the 
hour.  Any  one  of  the  four  is  willing  to  wash 

35 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


the  dogs,  run  on  errands,  hunt  for  mislaid 
spectacles,  or  weed  the  garden,  and  I  have 
not  the  slightest  doubt  that  they  would 
milk  the  cows  or  feed  the  pigs,  were  they 
told  to  do  so,  and  do  it  very  well,  too.  Rose 
guards  her  mistress  with  ferocious  care,  and 
is  so  careful  of  her  property  that  my  friend 
is  frequently  unable  to  effect  an  entrance 
into  her  own  house ;  but  there  are  no  strikes 
in  that  household,  and  no  uncertainty  as  to 
who  is  mistress  and  who  is  maid.  My  friend 
may  be  reactionary,  but  she  is  uncom 
monly  comfortable. 


Ill 

AUTRES  TEMPS,  AUTRES  MCEURS 


Ill 


THE  truth  is,"  I  remarked  reflectively 
to  a  friend  and  contemporary,  "I 
ought  to  have  died  fifty  years  ago." 

"  In  that  case  you  would  not  have  had  a 
very  long  life,"  he  replied.  (I  do  like  men!) 
"Why?" 

He  is  as  old  as  I  am  and  has  nearly  as 
many  grandchildren,  but  I  was  obliged  to 
explain  to  him  that  I  am  a  peace-loving  and 
aged  woman,  and  that  the  turmoil  and  un 
rest  of  to-day  were  too  new  and  too  strange 
to  be  endured  by  one  whose  youth  had  been 
passed  in  decent  and  respectable  times. 

It  was  a  pouring,  rainy  day,  and  possibly 
this  may  have  helped  to  cast  a  gentle  tinge 
of  melancholy  over  our  reminiscences  of  the 
past  and  discussion  of  the  present.  There 
was  no  lack  of  material  for  either,  and  I 
really  enjoyed  talking  to  him,  for  though  he 
is  unfortunate  in  that  he  does  not  live  in 
Boston,  it  is  broadening  to  the  mind  to  get 

39 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


an  outsider's  point  of  view  occasionally. 
Besides,  he  is  one  of  the  few  men  I  really 
trust.  His  wife  is  a  suffragist,  and  if  anybody 
wants  an  illustration  of  real  tact  and  dis 
cretion,  they  will  find  it  in  the  fact  that, 
despite  our  intimacy  of  some  forty  years' 
standing,  I  have  never  been  able  to  ascer 
tain  his  personal  views  on  the  subject  of 
suffrage  and  the  vote.  We  began  on  this 
subject  because  I  had  recently  been  at 
tacked  from  that  direction  by  a  near  rela 
tive  with  whose  views  I  do  not  agree,  and  I 
was  still  a  bit  sore  about  it. 

It  is  infinitely  more  satisfactory  to  talk 
to  men  than  to  women  because  they  do  not 
take  one  so  literally  as  do  one's  female 
friends,  and  the  quiet  self-assurance  of  their 
superiority  is  always  restful.  I  am  apt  to 
accept  their  opinions  (with  reservations), 
so  I  naturally  laid  before  my  old  friend 
some  of  the  difficulties  that  I  foresee  in  this 
evil  of  suffrage  that  is  about  to  fall  upon 
my  sex.  I  am  distinctly  troubled  by  the 
prospect.  When  I  was  young,  right  was 
right  and  wrong  was  wrong,  with  the  line 

40 


AUTRES  TEMPS,  AUTRES  MCEURS 

as  clearly  marked  as  between  black  and 
white;  life  did  not  get  all  mixed  up  into  a 
dirty  grey  as  it  does  nowadays.  If  a  matter 
was  right,  it  was  right;  if  it  was  wrong,  it 
was  wrong;  if  two  duties  clashed,  we  cheer 
fully  selected  the  most  disagreeable,  hap 
pily  convinced  that  the  most  disagreeable 
was  the  most  virtuous,  and  let  it  go  at  that, 
simple  souls  that  we  were.  Now,  however, 
I  find  myself  confronted  by  a  situation  in 
which  I  am  going  to  do  wrong  whatever  I 
do.  No  conviction  that  I  own  is  more  deeply 
rooted  within  me  than  the  belief  that  for  a 
woman  to  vote,  is  for  her  to  commit  a  Sin. 
Not  just  a  venial  offence,  but  an  act  which 
comes  under  the  head  of  some  one,  if  not 
all,  of  the  seven  deadly  sins.  Now  I  am  a 
loyal  and  patriotic  soul,  and  if  this  amend 
ment  is  irretrievably  added  to  the  Consti 
tution,  it  becomes  obligatory  by  law  for  me 
to  vote;  so  there  I  am,  on  the  horns  of  a 
dilemma.  If  I  do  not  vote,  I  commit  the 
deadly  sin  of  breaking  constitutional  law, 
and  if  I  do,  I  am  perfectly  sure  that  I  shall 
commit  every  sin  known  to  man  —  and 

41 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


there  are  plenty  of  them.  Apparently  my 
soul  is  headed  straight  for  perdition  in  any 
case.  I  am  full  of  resentment,  anyway,  that 
this  burden  of  purifying  politics  should 
have  been  placed  upon  the  shoulders  of  the 
oppressed  and  down-trodden  race  of  moth 
ers  and  housekeepers ;  of  all  the  problems 
in  life  that  we  are  asked  to  tackle,  this 
should  have  been  the  very  last.  Perhaps  it 
is,  for  by  the  time  we  have  solved  it  our 
race  will  be  rendered  extinct.  I  have  no  ob 
jection  to  picking  up  the  loose  ends  and 
polishing  up  a  man's  job  when  he  has  done 
his  share,  but  with  all  the  other  things  I 
have  to  do,  I  see  no  reason  why  I  should  do 
his  work  as  well  as  my  own;  and  if  politics 
is  n't  a  man's  job,  I  should  like  to  know 
what  is.  Besides,  it  takes  so  many  men  to 
accomplish  any  one  thing  that  I  should  lose 
all  patience  in  working  with  them;  which 
conviction  was  borne  in  upon  me  the  other 
day  when  occasion  arose  to  lay  some  brick 
outside  my  house.  The  space  to  be  covered 
was  one  foot  six  inches  by  two  feet  six 
inches,  and  the  number  of  bricks  required 

42 


AUTRES  TEMPS,  A  UTRES  MCEURS 

was  fifty-one.  I  know  because  I  counted 
them  after  they  were  laid.  I  happened  to  be 
standing  at  my  front  door  when  the  outfit 
arrived,  and  I  watched  the  process  with  in 
terest.  A  large  two-horse  team  was  halted, 
in  its  leisurely  progress,  before  my  house, 
turned  (much  to  the  annoyance  of  passing 
traffic),  and  solemnly  backed  up  to  the 
kerb.  It  contained  one  pail,  one  shovel, 
the  requisite  number  of  brick,  and  three 
stalwart  men ;  one  to  carry  the  bricks  a  dis 
tance  of  fifteen  feet,  one  to  do  the  work,  and 
the  other  to  look  on ;  and  it  took  them  one 
hour  and  a  half  to  do  it.  I  could  have  car 
ried  the  bricks  home  from  the  kiln,  and  done 
the  work  with  my  own  two  unaided  hands 
in  half  an  hour.  I  would  have  done  so,  too, 
only  that  the  place  was  in  the  front  of  the 
house,  and  I  am  too  considerate  to  scanda 
lize  my  neighbours.  It  was  a  beautiful  illus 
tration  of  the  masculine  method  in  politics. 
Men  do  love  to  think  they  are  busy;  so,  in 
stead  of  being  content  with  voting  on  elec 
tion  days,  they  go  busily  to  work  and  hold 
something  called  primaries,  where  they 

43 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


proceed  solemnly  to  vote  who  they  would 
vote  for  if  they  were  voting  for  anybody. 
It  must  be  a  hollow  joy.  Shall  we  women 
have  to  do  that,  too,  I  wonder?  If  so,  the 
men  need  not  trouble  themselves  over 
the  suggestion  to  scrap  the  primaries;  the 
women  will  do  all  the  scrapping  necessary. 
"How,"  I  enquired  of  my  friend,  "could 
I  find  time  to  carry  on  work  in  such  fash 
ion?  Last  year  I  was  an  orphan  asylum; 
this  year  I  am  a  lying-in  hospital;  I  have 
charity  board  meetings,  sewing  circles, 
health  committees  to  attend;  meals  to  or 
der  and  a  husband  to  reckon  with;  kindly 
tell  me  when  I  should  have  time  to  do  real 
voting,  let  alone  primaries?" 

Personally  I  should  find  it  a  fearful  men 
tal  strain  to  decide  which  candidate  I  liked 
best,  and  whether  it  was  my  duty  to  stick 
to  my  party  or  to  my  preferences;  and 
somehow  or  other  I  have  a  feeling  that  a 
woman's  judgement  would  not  be  altogether 
unbiassed  in  such  matters.  The  near  rela 
tive,  alluded  to  above,  came  and  sat  on  the 
edge  of  my  bed  before  I  was  up  the  other 

44 


AUTRES  TEMPS,  AUTRES  MCEURS 

day,  bursting  with  enthusiasm  over  a  re 
cently  returned  and  very  charming  colonel 
of  the  A.E.F.  She  said  that  she  thought  he 
would  make  the  finest  President  that  the 
United  States  could  possibly  have,  as  he 
possessed  exactly  the  qualities  that  would 
fit  him  for  it;  keen  judgement,  wonderful 
penetration,  intimate  knowledge  of  men, 
and  marvellously  wide  sympathies.  She 
glowed  with  pride  as,  in  illustration  of  the 
last-named  attribute,  she  described  his  inter 
est  in  her  grandchildren,  and  how  instant 
had  been  his  realization  of  the  cleverness 
of  one,  the  precocity  of  another,  and  the 
beauty  of  them  all.  "  Did  he,  by  any  chance, 
tell  you  that  they  strongly  resembled  their 
grandmother?"  I  enquired.  "Why --yes," 
she  replied  with  a  charming  little  elderly 
blush;  "why  do  you  ask?" 

I  would  really  have  liked  advice  on  this 
vexed  question,  but  the  only  suggestion 
my  friend  could  make  was  that  I  might  be 
come  a  conscientious  objector.  I  do  not 
think,  though,  that  I  have  fallen  as  low  as 
that  yet.  I  observe  that  one's  conscience  is 

45 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


most  apt  to  object  when  the  call  upon  it  is 
something  that  one  does  not  like.  No;  I 
should  prefer  to  fall  back  upon  proto 
plasms.  Scientists  tell  us  that  the  human 
race  is  evolved  from  two  protoplasms,  one 
created  to  vote,  the  other  not  to,  and  it  is  of 
no  use  trying  to  get  behind  protoplasms; 
one  is  so  apt  to  find  nothing  there. 

Thinking  the  matter  over  seriously, 
I  am  inclined  to  feel  that  it  would  be  of 
little  use  trying  to  reform  politics  unless 
one  first  reformed  the  newspapers  of  to 
day.  "There,"  said  my  friend,  "you  appeal 
to  my  prejudices  as  well  as  to  my  princi 
ples."  I  was  glad  of  that.  I  always  did  pre 
fer  to  appeal  to  a  man's  prejudices  rather 
than  to  his  principles;  there  are  so  many 
more  of  them,  and  in  this  matter  we  agreed 
perfectly  that  the  influence  of  many  mod 
ern  newspapers  was  pernicious  in  the  ex 
treme.  Possibly  they  may  be  no  more  a  real 
woman's  province  than  are  politics,  but  I 
have  my  opinion  of  them,  all  the  same,  and 
they  are  one  of  the  trials  of  my  life.  One 
cannot  refrain  from  reading  them,  and  the 


A  UTRES  TEMPS,  A  UTRES  MCEURS 

mental  effort  of  subtracting  the  possible 
grains  of  truth  from  the  tissue  of  journal 
istic  imagination  is  equalled  only  by  the 
mental  gymnastics  required  to  chase  the 
article  in  which  one  is  interested,  as  it  skips 
gleefully  from  column  to  column  on  widely 
separated  sheets.  The  front  page  of  my 
beloved  "Herald"  is  strongly  suggestive  of 
a  London  'bus,  and  though  nothing  could 
be  more  pleasant  than  such  association,  the 
one  is  as  confusing  in  the  search  for  knowl 
edge  as  is  the  other  in  the  quest  of  one's 
destination.  One  acquires  quite  startling  in 
formation  at  times.  I  had  no  idea,  until 
I  read  it  this  morning,  that  "the  effect  the 
suspensions  would  have  on  the  graduate 
accumulation  and  resultant  congestion  of 
goods  at  Atlantic  and  Gulf  ports  would  be 
the  (continued  on  page  eight)  largest  sale 
of  any  high-grade  caramels  in  America." 
This  is  interesting  and,  probably,  quite 
true,  but  I  have  often  wondered  if  this 
rending  of  continuity  in  journalism  may 
not  be  responsible  for  a  man's  method  of 
reading  the  newspapers.  Of  course  they 

47 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


cannot  be  read  peacefully,  page  after  page, 
as  one  reads  a  book,  because  one  has  to  turn 
and  re-turn  and  play  leap-frog  generally,  in 
order  to  follow  the  article  from  page  I  to 
page  9  to  page  37;  but  just  why  a  man 
should  pick  every  section  to  pieces  and 
carpet  the  entire  floor  with  them  is  one  of 
those  things  that  he  is  unable  to  explain. 
I  never  have  time  to  go  to  church  on  Sun 
day,  because  my  entire  morning  is  occupied 
picking  newspapers  off  the  floor. 

But  this  is  irrelevant.  Both  my  friend 
and  I  felt  that  the  newspapers  were  not 
invariably  on  the  side  of  law  and  order,  and 
that  at  times  they  permitted  themselves 
a  licence  that  is  subversive  of  discipline. 
So  far  as  I  can  see,  discipline  exists  nowhere 
in  these  days  except  in  the  army,  and  if  I 
am  ever  obliged  to  imperil  my  soul  by  vot 
ing,  I  will  do  so  cheerfully  if  my  vote  will 
ensure  conscription.  The  army  is  pretty 
nearly  the  only  institution  in  the  country 
in  which  one  may  safely  place  one's  faith. 
We  have  behaved  uncommonly  well  in  Bos 
ton  during  a  recent  unpleasantness,  but  the 
48 


AUTRES  TEMPS,  AUTRES  MCEURS 

situation  might  have  been  deplorable  had  it 
not  instead  been  rendered  distinctly  agree 
able  by  the  presence  of  that  first  cousin  once 
removed  to  the  army,  under  whose  charge 
we  are  at  present  luxuriating.  They  are  not 
only  efficient  but  adorable,  and  their  fame 
is  spreading  throughout  the  land.  A  lady 
from  New  York  was  obliged  to  visit  Boston 
when  our  troubles  here  first  began,  and  the 
perils  of  a  visit  to  Boston,  as  predicted  by 
New  York,  were  such  that  the  valiant  lady 
made  her  will  and  ensured  her  life  before 
she  bought  her  ticket.  After  a  few  days  in 
this  perfectly  quiet  and  well-conducted 
town,  she  expressed  herself  as  totally  un 
able  to  understand  the  law  and  order  that 
reigned  throughout  the  place.  "Why!"  she 
exclaimed,  "if  this  had  happened  in  New 
York  — !!!"  But  she  left  the  rest  of  the  sen 
tence  to  our  imagination.  I  entirely  agreed 
with  her.  I  stood  one  day  at  a  particularly 
congested  street  corner,  watching  an  ex 
tremely  good-looking  young  mounted  "vet 
eran"  directing  the  traffic. 

I  was  so  absorbed  in  admiration  that  I 

49 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


lost  all  track  of  time,  and  was  only  awak 
ened  to  a  realization  that  I  was  blocking 
the  pavement  by  a  pleasant  voice  that 
made  itself  heard  beside  my  shoulder. 
"Please,"  said  a  uniformed  figure  with  an 
alarming-looking  bayonet  over  its  shoulder; 
"would  you  be  so  kind  as  to  move  on?" 
I  am  perfectly  certain  that  a  New  York 
policeman  would  not  have  put  it  that  way ; 
even  a  London  Bobby  might  have  said  — 
"Move  on  there!" 

Of  course  I  do  not  wish  to  assert  our  su 
periority,  nor  to  draw  any  derogatory  com 
parisons.  I  observed  broad-mindedly  to  my 
friend  that  Boston  had  troubles  of  her  own, 
and  that  every  city  in  the  Union  seemed  to 
have  gone  crazy.  He  assented  to  this,  and 
in  proof  of  our  assertion  produced  a  letter 
which  had  recently  been  sent  him  from 
Washington,  and  which  he  read  aloud  to 
me: 

"...  We  have  had  another  toilsome, 
troubled  week.  The  great  difficulty  of  ob 
taining  good  and  willing  servants  is  annoy 
ing  and  vexatious.  To  serve  is  no  part  of  the 

50 


A  UTRES  TEMPS,  A  UTRES  MCEURS 

intention  of  a  large  portion  of  the  hired 
help  or  assistants  —  or  only  to  serve  ac 
cording  to  their  own  pleasure  and  on  their 
own  terms.  The  great  object  is  to  render 
the  least  possible  service  and  to  obtain  the 
highest  amount  of  wages  obtainable.  .  .  . 
This,  especially  the  shirking  part,  is  partic 
ularly  the  case  with  the  Irish  —  more  so 
than  with  American  or  other  nationalities 
—  and  the  difficulties  are  on  the  increase. 
.  .  .  There  has  been  a  class  of  demagogue 
politicians  wTho  have  contributed  largely  to 
this  state  of  things  by  which  all  affairs  — 
domestic,  political,  and  other  —  are  dis 
turbed  without  benefit  to  employer  or  em 
ployed.  The  teachings  and  influence  of  the 
1  New  York  Tribune '  have  been  pernicious. 
B and  a  class  of  demagogues  in  Con 
gress  have  enacted  a  most  outrageous 
law—" 

But  that  was  as  much,  and  more,  than  I 
could  bear,  and  at  that  point  I  gave  way  to 
unmitigated  pessimism.  I  doubt  if  even  Mr. 
Morrison  Swift  views  modern  life  more 
gloomily  than  I  did  at  that  moment.  "It  is 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


alarming  beyond  expression,"  I  declared 
lugubriously;  " fifty  years  ago  we  were  an 
honest  and  respectable  people,  and  to-day 
we  have  deteriorated  until  there  is  neither 
honour  nor  honesty  left  in  the  race.  What 
a  pitiful  contrast!" 

"Perhaps,"  he  replied  thoughtfully,  with 
a  hateful  little  masculine  twinkle  in  the  tail 
of  his  eye;  "but  the  date  of  that  letter  is 
June  3,  1869." 


IV 

THE  LOST  ART  OF  LETTER- 
WRITING 


IV 

THE  LOST  ART  OF  LETTER- 
WRITING 

WITH  the  never-dying  interest  felt 
in  the  subject  by  the  female  mind, 
I  read  a  thrilling  scene  in  a  novel  the  other 
day,  in  which  was  depicted  a  difference  of 
opinion  between  a  man  and  his  wife.  When 
the  climax  was  reached,  the  lady,  with 
great  dignity  and  propriety,  remarked  to 
her  husband  that  he  must  choose  between 
her  and  the  tertium  quid  in  question;  and 
the  husband,  with  time-honoured  pro 
priety,  chose  his  wife.  It  was  all  very  pleas 
ant  reading,  and  one  closed  the  book  with 
a  sense  of  having  been  truly  uplifted.  That 
course  of  action  always  seems  to  work  beau 
tifully  in  novels,  but  in  real  life  it  some 
times  misses  the  mark,  as  I  found  when  I 
tried  once  to  work  it  on  the  husband  that 
happens  to  belong  to  me. 

Some  years  ago  we  had,  as  head  gardener, 
or  farmer,  a  man  who  was  so  unsatisfactory 

55 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


(to  me,  at  all  events)  that  one  summer  mat 
ters  came  to  a  head.  Apparently  the  farmer 
considered  that  it  was  my  personal  duty  to 
remove  the  —  the  —  refuse  from  the  back 
piazza  to  the  pig-stye,  and  he  absolutely  re 
fused  to  black  the  boots.  My  dear  father 
took  this  last-mentioned  duty  upon  him 
self,  and  an  early  riser  might  have  had  the 
privilege  (provided  my  father  did  not  hear 
him  coming)  of  seeing  an  extremely  aristo 
cratic  old  gentleman,  arrayed  in  the  briefest 
of  shirt-tails,  seated  on  the  back  stairs  with 
a  blacking-brush  in  one  hand  and  a  guest's 
boot  balanced  on  the  other.  An  English 
friend  once  remarked  that  he  thought  it  the 
most  graphic  picture  of  a  duke  in  reduced 
circumstances  that  he  had  ever  seen. 

Finally,  however,  the  relations  between 
the  farmer  and  myself  became  so  strained 
that  I  could  not  bear  it  another  minute;  so 
with  all  the  time-honoured  dignity  (that  I 
could  muster)  I  told  my  husband  that  he 
must  choose  between  the  farmer  and  me. 
He  chose  —  the  farmer!  That  fussed  me  up 
a  good  deal  because  I  had  no  precedent  to 

56 


THE  LOST  ART  OF  LETTER-WRITING 

go  by;  but  I  was  n't  going  back  on  my  dig 
nity,  and  as  the  farmer  would  not  leave, 
I  had  to.  A  few  years  later  he  was  dismissed 
(in  disgrace),  but  I  am  much  relieved,  even 
at  this  late  date,  to  make  public  my  action, 
as  for  several  years  I  have  lived  before 
the  world  a  misjudged  and  misunderstood 
woman.  You  observe,  I  left.  I  have  a  perfectly 
good  family  of  assorted  consanguinity  who 
are  all  quite  capable  of  filling  my  place  in 
the  household,  so  I  refused  to  be  a  little 
martyr  any  longer,  and  arranged  that  here 
after  my  summers  should  be  really  enjoy 
able.  Consequently,  as  I  was  not  at  the 
farm,  and  my  husband  was  toiling  between 
there  and  the  town  in  the  hot  train  and 
making  believe  he  loved  it,  of  course  it  was 
necessary  to  arrange  for  a  correspondence 
between  us. 

I  apologize  for  the  banalite  of  the  remark, 
but  it  has  been  borne  in  upon  me  during 
past  years  that  letter-writing  is  a  lost 
art.  The  observation  is  more  than  banal; 
it  is  an  aphorism,  and  the  truth.  My  hus 
band  is  not  one  bit  worse  about  it  than 

57 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


anybody  else,  but  having  recently  returned 
from  a  two  months'  holiday,  I  have  become 
convinced  that  there  is  a  brevity  and  lack 
of  detail  in  the  letters  of  to-day  that  leave 
much  to  be  desired.  On  thinking  it  over,  I 
conclude  that  the  lack  I  find  in  letters  from 
my  friends  evidences  an  absence  of  egotism 
on  their  part.  Now,  when  anything  inter 
esting  or  of  interest  happens  to  me,  I  am 
instantly  seized  with  an  irresistible  desire 
to  sit  down  and  write  my  long-suffering 
friends  all  about  it,  with  all  the  pros  and 
cons,  details  and  ornamentations.  Then, 
after  an  interminable  interval,  during  which 
I  fly  to  the  door  every  time  the  postman 
comes,  expecting  a  ten-page  letter  of  sym 
pathy,  I  receive,  at  the  end  of  ten  days  or 
two  weeks,  three  pages  of  three  words  to  a 
line,  about  something  else,  and  either  no 
allusion  at  all  to  my  thrilling  news,  or  pos 
sibly  a  three-word  postscript  tucked  illegi 
bly  into  a  corner.  As  for  getting  anybody  to 
answer  a  question  in  a  letter,  I  have  given 
that  up  long  ago.  If  an  answer  is  impera 
tive,  I  write  my  question  on  a  return,  self- 

53 


THE  LOST  ART  OF  LETTER-WRITING 

addressed  postcard,  and  if  I  am  lucky,  or 
my  correspondent  has  even  an  embryonic 
conscience,  I  may  receive  a  reply  in  the 
course  of  a  week  or  ten  days.  It  does  not, 
even  then,  invariably  bring  the  informa 
tion  requested.  A  short  time  ago  I  wished 
to  verify  the  name  of  a  gentleman  in  the 
Bible.  I  knew  approximately  where  to  find 
him,  but  I  was  comfortably  curled  up  in 
bed,  writing,  and  my  Bible  was  tidily  re 
posing  upon  my  prie-dieu  across  the  room. 
So  I  picked  up  one  of  the  above-mentioned 
postcards,  of  which  I  keep  a  supply  at  hand, 
wrote  down  my  question,  sent  it  to  the 
post,  and  dismissed  the  matter  from  my 
mind.  At  the  end  of  a  week  or  ten  days  I 
received  the  torn-off  card  bearing  the  terse 
reply:  "If  such  a  thing  as  a  Bible  can  be 
found  in  Boston,  see  II  Kings,  chap. — , 
verse  — ."  I  knew  pretty  nearly  as  much  as 
that  myself,  but  did  not  want  the  trouble 
of  looking  for  it.  However,  this  was  the 
same  friend  who  once  wrote  me  that,  hav 
ing  a  bad  cold,  she  "had  retired  to  bed  with 
S.  Paul  on  one  side  and  Bismarck  on  the 

59 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


other,"  so  I  had  not  expected  too  much 
from  a  lady  of  such  tastes.  In  any  case,  I 
regard  a  postcard  as  little  short  of  an  in 
sult,  and  would  prefer  to  receive  even  a  bill; 
it  tells  one  more.  I  am  a  convert  to  the  pic 
ture  postcard  when  it  is  bought  by  one's 
self  for  one's  self  as  a  reminder  of  a  place, 
but  to  send  them  from  abroad  to  one's 
friends  at  home,  with  some  such  remark 
written  upon  them  as  "Here  yesterday. 
Is  n't  it  lovely?  "  -  fills  me  with  exaspera 
tion.  I  usually  reply  by  returning  another 
picture  postcard  of  Long  Wharf,  or  some 
equally  unfrequented  portion  of  Boston, 
with  the  enquiry,  "  Does  n't  this  make  you 
homesick?" 

Letter-wTriting  is  a  real  art  and  should  be 
cultivated,  both  as  to  writing  letters  and  as 
to  enjoying  them  when  received.  Naturally 
they  should  be  legible,  and  about  this  I  am 
myself  very  particular.  One  of  my  dearest 
aunts  implores  me  to  use  my  type-writer 
when  I  write  her,  and  another  dear  friend 
tells  me  that  my  letters  are  "perfectly 
charming"  (usually  underlined),  and  that 
60 


THE  LOST  ART  OF  LETTER-WRITING 

she  enjoys  them  immensely,  only  she  can 
not  read  a  word  of  them.  Possibly  this  may 
be  the  reason  she  enjoys  them  so  much,  but 
I  keep  bravely  on,  hoping  that  time  and 
study  may  accustom  her  to  the  originality 
of  my  handwriting,  and  anxiously  accept 
ing  the  risk  that  greater  legibility  may 
lessen  her  appreciation. 

My  husband  is  an  extremely  busy  man. 
He  hates  nothing  so  much  as  to  write  let 
ters,  and  his  idea  of  an  earthly  Paradise  is  an 
inaccessible  island  where  any  approaching 
postman  would  be  shot  at  sight.  It  can  eas 
ily  be  imagined  that  for  him  to  write  his 
letters  to  me  with  his  own  hand  instead  of 
dictating  them,  to  be  written  by  the  type 
writer,  is  flattering  to  me  in  the  extreme, 
and  I  really  do  appreciate  it.  His  calligraphy 
is  as  beautiful  as  one  can  expect  from  a  gen 
tleman  who  still  persists  in  using  a  quill  pen, 

-  it  is  the  only  sign  of  age  that  he  shows, 

-  and  his  letters  run  somewhat  as  follows : 
"  Dear,"  "  Dearest,"  or  "  Dearest  Blank," 

(according  to  the  amount  of  time  at  his 

disposal  —  or  possibly  to  the  degree,  Fah- 

61 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


rcnhcit,  of  his  affections  at  the  moment). 
"Had  a  fine  day  yes'day  at  farm.  Apps. 
com'g  on  in  fine  shape.  Finshd-wk.  on 
celery  bed  &  weeded  garden.  Hollyhks. 
superb.  Had  int'view  c  Blank  at  office,  ar- 
rgnd  about  plmbg.  Tho't  he'd  make  more 
trouble  but  he  agrd.  to  everything.  A.  came 
out  of  ether  beautifully  —  doing  O.K." 

Now  that  was  truly  interesting,  only  I 
wondered  what  "A."  had  gone  under  ether 
for.  The  last  time  I  had  seen  him,  a  few 
days  previously,  he  appeared  to  be  in  the 
best  of  health  and  spirits.  Nothing  would 
have  induced  me  to  telegraph  enquiries  as 
to  what  had  happened,  because  I  knew 
quite  well  that  I  should  be  accused  of  wor 
rying,  but  in  every  letter  sent  to  my  family 
during  my  absence  I  mentioned  that  I  was 
of  an  inquisitive  disposition,  and  would  love 
to  know  what  had  happened.  Many  friends 
wrote  me  of  how  well  he  was  doing,  and  how 
thankful  I  must  be  that  it  was  no  worse, 
and  in  almost  every  letter  I  had  from  the 
family  I  was  told  that  he  was  doing  finely 
and  that  I  was  not  to  worry.  I  did  n't;  but 
62 


THE  LOST  ART  OF  LETTER-WRITING 

I  did  not  learn  what  had  happened  till  I  got 
home  and  pinned  "A."  personally  into  a 
corner  where  it  was  impossible  for  him  to 
get  away  from  me. 

One  of  my  friends  is  in  such  a  hurry  to 
get  through  the  irksome  task  of  writing  a 
letter  that  she  leaves  out  most  of  her  words, 
and  as  they  are  usually  the  important  ones, 
I  frequently  have  brain-storms  in  my  ef 
forts  to  ascertain  what  she  is  writing  about. 
I  had  a  letter  from  her  the  other  day  in 
which  she  wrote:  "I  clean  forgot  to  offer 
my  letter  of  yesterday  —  a  monstrous 
oversight  —  but  my  go  to  you  with  my 
best  wishes  to  you  and  your's.  ...  I  won 
der  Browning  and  Noyes  fall  down  before 
such  poetry."  It  was  a  really  interesting 
letter.  I  have  known  her  for  more  years 
than  she  will  permit  me  to  mention,  so  I 
can  usually  read  her  mind  and  know  what 
she  means;  I  also  happened  to  remember 
that  I  had  recently  celebrated  a  disagree 
ably  advanced  birthday  of  my  own,  so 
I  was  able  to  supply  the  felicitations  (or 
sympathy)  that  should  have  been  sent  in 

63 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


the  letter  received  the  day  previously;  but 
I  waited  with  pathetic  interest  to  see  what 
was  coming  to  me  with  her  good  wishes. 
I  thought  it  might  be  a  new  motor,  or  a 
diamond  necklace,  or  even  a  jar  of  her  sweet 
pickle,  which  is  popular  in  my  family  and 
would  have  been  most  welcome,  but  noth 
ing  ever  came.  The  last  sentence  I  am  still 
working  over  as,  owing  to  a  certain  lack  of 
punctuation,  I  do  not  elicit  her  meaning 
with  my  usual  quickness  of  grasp.  I  cannot 
think  why  she  is  in  such  a  hurry  to  finish 
her  letters  because  they  are  so  delightful 
in  their  wit  and  humour  that  she  ought  to 
enjoy  writing  them;  and  if  she  would  only 
refrain  from  licking  the  envelope  flaps  till 
they  stick  from  end  to  end,  so  that  it  is  im 
possible  to  open  them,  they  would  be  quite 
perfect. 

It  is  not  only  my  contemporaries  who 
scatter  these  flowers  of  literature  along  the 
path  of  my  declining  years.  I  am  also  priv 
ileged  to  include  a  large  number  of  youthful 
friends  among  my  correspondents,  and  we 
discuss  all  sorts  of  subjects.  Not  being  rel- 

64 


THE  LOST  ART  OF  LETTER-WRITING 

atives,  they  are  willing  to  discuss  even 
the  education  of  their  children  with  me, 
and  one  of  them  once  took  my  advice. 
I  am  really  very  respectful  in  my  attitude 
regarding  the  education  of  to-day;  it  is 
so  superior  to  anything  we  had  in  my  time 
and  so  superlatively  putile.  (I  invented  that 
word  myself  and  being  translated,  it  means 
a  mixture  of  "puerile"  and  "futile.")  I  hap 
pen  to  be  corresponding  with  one  of  them 
just  now  upon  education,  and  I  find  it  most 
edifying.  In  one  letter  I  asked  her  how 
much  her  daughter,  aged  six,  learned  at 
kindergarten,  and  the  reply  came  back  in 
one  word  written  in  the  middle  of  a  large 
sheet  of  paper: 

NOTHING 

I  had  been  inclined  to  suspect  as  much,  and 
chuckled.  I  replied  that  I  thought  it  rather 
hard  that  she  should  have  to  pay  out  one  or 
two  hundred  dollars  a  year  for  the  attain 
ment  of  such  an  immaterial  object,  and  fur 
ther  enquired  as  to  the  curriculum  of  her 
older  daughter,  aged  about  ten. 

65 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


"English,  History,  Latin,  Geography,  a 
mixture  of  Arithmetic  and  Algebra,  and 
French."  I  studied  the  list  thoughtfully. 
"English,"  I  suppose,  includes  grammar, 
and  I  could  only  trust  that  the  "History" 
was  not  of  the  American  variety  prevalent 
in  our  schools.  It  seems  a  bit  supereroga 
tory  to  devote  much  time  to  Geography 
just  now,  because  there  is  so  little  of  it,  but 
I  regarded  my  friend's  child  with  respectful 
awe  that  at  ten  years  of  age  she  should  be 
tackling  Algebra.  French  is  most  useful, 
and  a  knowledge  of  it  cannot  be  too  early 
instilled,  but,  as  I  pondered  over  each  les 
son  set,  I  did  not  seem  able  to  find  a  single 
one  which  might  possibly  conceal  spelling 
or  writing  beneath  some  more  imposing 
title.  I  have  frequently  been  assured  that 
one  is  born  with  or  without  a  gift  for  spell 
ing,  in  which  case  the  Spelling  Fairy  must 
have  worn  herself  out  attending  the  chris 
tening  parties  of  the  older  generation,  and 
is  able  to  be  present  at  only  a  limited  num 
ber  of  such  occasions  in  these  days.  Either 
this,  or  something  else,  must  account  for 
66 


THE  LOST  ART  OF  LETTER-WRITING 

the  lack  of  the  gift  of  spelling  in  some  of  my 
young  friends.  I  had  a  letter  from  one  the 
other  day  which  was  really  quite  unique. 
She  confided  to  me  that  she  was  "  writting  " 
in  a  hurry  to  tell  me  that  she  "thoght"  she 
had  about  "desided"  to  take  up  "littera- 
ture"  as  a  "proffession."  I  could  only  reply 
that  I  was  greatly  interested,  and  that  I  did 
hope  she  would  be  fortunate  enough  to  find 
a  really  good  proof-reader. 

But,  dear  me,  what  do  such  trifles  as  con 
tractions,  omissions,  and  misspelling  mat 
ter!  The  affection  is  expressed  in  just  as  full 
measure,  and  interest  is  always  to  be  found. 
If  people  could  only  be  convinced  that 
"  battle,  murder,  and  sudden  death  "  do  not 
constitute  the  sole  interest  of  a  letter. 
Never  shall  I  forget  a  letter  from  my  father, 
the  very  best  of  old-fashioned  correspond 
ents,  written  to  me  when  I  had  been  living 
abroad  for  some  years.  There  was  little  of 
excitement  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the 
word.  He  mentioned  just  in  which  room  and 
upon  what  chair  my  mother  was  sitting 
and  what  she  was  doing.  He  made  a  few 

67 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


pungent  remarks  upon  the  choreman  who 
had  broken  a  large  pane  of  glass  (my  parent 
was  a  very  real  man) ;  and  he  observed  that 
he  had  just  glanced  out  of  the  window  and 
had  seen  Mr.  Blank's  cat  crawling  along  the 
communicating  steps  of  the  houses  oppo 
site.  I  never  in  my  life  wras  so  interested  — 
specially  in  the  cat.  I  knew  just  what  he 
looked  like,  and  just  the  holes  in  the  iron 
railing  through  which  he  would  elect  to 
crawl.  I  read  and  re-read  that  letter  till  it 
was  almost  worn  out,  and  though  it  was 
written  some  thirty-seven  years  ago  I  have 
never  forgotten  it  —  or  that  cat. 

Few  people  keep  letters  in  these  days, 
and  small  blame  to  them ;  few  are  worth  the 
keeping.  Were  more  of  them  like  those  of 
my  father's  and  "Mother  Auton's,"  few 
would  be  destroyed. 

"What  a  correspondent  she  was,  to  be 
sure!  'Wait  for  Mother  Auton's  letters,  if 
you  want  to  hear  the  truth  about  it,'  was 
the  common  shibboleth  in  the  family.  Her 
epistles  were  comforts  to  the  homesick 
school-boy,  the  delight  of  her  children  in 
68 


THE  LOST  ART  OF  LETTER-WRITING 

foreign  lands,  and  became  valuable  tran 
scripts  of  the  current  history  of  the  whole 
Auton  tribe.  For  forty  years  she  wrote  a 
weekly  bulletin  to  her  absent  ones,  bring 
ing  to  their  anxious  hearts  fresh  photo 
graphs  of  home. 

"Mother  Auton  would  never  sit  at  a 
desk.  Neither  'secretary'  nor  'davenport' 
suited  her  purpose.  .  .  .  She  took  her  writ 
ing-materials  on  her  broad,  motherly  lap, 
pushed  her  cap-strings  from  her  face,  ad 
justed  her  gold  spectacles  over  her  ample 
nose,  dipped  her  pen  daintily  in  the  ink  .  .  . 
and  away  it  ran  so  merrily  over  the  paper 
that  she  would  be  on  her  fourth  page  be 
fore  we  children,  who  were  seated  around 
her,  had  half  gotten  through  sucking  our 
oranges.  People  write  letters  now,  lots  of 
them,  heaps  of  them;  but  I  very  much 
doubt  whether  they  contain  one  half  the 
valuable  news --the  harmless  gossip,  the 
genial  spirit  —  which  flowed  so  readily 
from  Mother  Auton's  pen. 

"There  she  sat  in  her  chair  every  Sunday 
morning  for  over  forty  years,  writing  the 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


weekly  epistle,  with  bended  head  and  be 
nign  expression,  while  the  wood  fire  hissed 
and  sputtered,  and  the  old  canary  sang  in 
the  sunlight." 


V 

MY  BOLSHEVIST 


V 

MY  BOLSHEVIST 

OUITE  recently  my  husband  attended 
a  large  dinner-party  where  he  had  the 
pleasure  of  hearing  a  speech  made  by  Mr. 
Gompers,  and  returned  to  the  bosom  of  his 
family  in  a  frame  of  mind  regarding  both 
the  manner  and  the  matter  of  the  address, 
that  bordered  upon  enthusiasm. 

My  husband  has  always  been  a  (moder 
ate)  upholder  of  the  labour  unions  and, 
being  a  dutiful  wife,  I  have  endeavoured  to 
be  guided  by  his  convictions  on  such  occa 
sions  as  I  have  not  felt  that  he  would  do  bet 
ter  to  be  guided  by  mine,  so  I  am  bringing 
my  mind  to  bear  upon  the  matter  in  order 
to  decide  which  of  the  two  above-mentioned 
courses  it  is  best  in  this  case  for  us  to  follow. 
It  is  a  difficult  matter  to  determine,  both  as 
regards  my  husband  and  the  subject  in 
question,  because  my  husband  usually  de 
cides  first  and  talks  about  it  afterwards, 
and  also  because  my  point  of  view  with  re- 

73 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


gard  to  labour,  socialism,  and  Bolshevism 
is  entirely  that  of  the  amateur.  Even  in  my 
proper  sphere  of  domestic  labour,  I  have 
had  but  one  experience  of  labour  difficul 
ties,  and  that  episode  was  caused  by  out 
side  interference  and  not  from  within  —  as 
is  usually  the  case.  I  settled  it  by  paying 
other  people  and  doing  the  work  myself  till 
the  atmosphere  cleared,  and  then  every 
body  settled  down ;  but  I  quite  realize  that 
such  a  course  is  not  always  practicable,  and 
I  feel  that  I  must  take  a  wider  view  of 
existing  circumstances. 

This,  also,  is  a  bit  inconvenient  because 
I  am  too  busy  to  attend  labour  meetings, 
and  I  find  it  impossible  to  read  the  articles 
provided  for  me  by  my  socialistic  friends 
and  relatives  because  they  exasperate  me  to 
such  an  extent  that  my  calm  judgement 
is  upset,  and  they  only  cause  me  to  yearn 
for  a  Czar  or  a  Dictator.  At  any  rate,  I 
prefer  to  make  my  investigations  at  first 
hand  and  to  judge  for  myself,  which  I  do  by 
holding  long  and  exhaustive  conversations 
with  the  workmen  of  various  trades  who 

74 


MY  BOLSHEVIST 


haunt  my  house  in  one  or  another  capacity. 
This  is  nothing  new, on  the  part  of  either 
the  workmen  or  myself.  We  have  had 
pretty  much  the  same  set  of  men  for  the 
past  forty  years,  and  we  have  grown  up  to 
gether,  so  to  speak;  consequently  I  dare 
say  I  do  not  meet  the  modern  and  more 
ambitious  men  who  are  reforming  the 
world  so  uncomfortably  for  themselves  and 
us;  still,  my  workmen  friends  are  not  yet 
superannuated,  and  I  am  both  interested 
and  edified  by  what  they  have  to  say. 

I  cannot,  at  this  moment,  remember  a 
single  one  of  these  men  who  has  expressed 
more  than  a  very  qualified  approval  of  the 
present  demands  of  labour,  and  the  major 
ity  are  almost  as  sceptical  of  its  rights  as 
I  am.  To  be  sure,  in  spite  of  the  encourag 
ing  orthodoxy  of  their  opinions,  they  charge 
me  just  the  same  for  their  labour  as  would 
the  maddest  socialist,  but  I  am  willing  to 
admit  that  I  don't  see  how  they  can  very 
well  help  it.  The  only  trouble  I  have  is  that 
I  never  seem  able  to  make  it  clear  to  them 
that,  while  I  quite  understand  that  I  must 

75 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


pay  them  more  because  they  are  obliged  to 
pay  their  men  more,  nobody  pays  me  one  bit 
more,  and  that  it  is  I  who  suffer.  I  get  quite 
a  good  deal  of  sympathy,  but  I  do  not  notice 
any  diminution  in  the  amount  of  the  bills. 

It  may  be  a  femininely  broad  statement, 
but  it  is  quite  true  that  I  have  yet  to  meet 
a  working-man  who  is  an  advanced  social 
ist.  My  personal  experiences  with  such  are 
confined  to  a  few  near  relatives,  and  one  or 
two  people  like  a  certain  Bolshevist  gentle 
man,  with  whom  I  long  to  make  a  closer 
acquaintance  than  he  has  permitted  me. 
I  have  several  really  dear  friends  whom  I 
have  never  seen,  and  with  whom  my  friend 
ship  is  based  solely  on  an  interchange  of 
letters,  but  the  gentleman  of  whom  I  speak 
gives  me  no  opportunity  for  reciprocity,  as 
when  he  wrote  me  his  long  and  interesting 
letter,  he  carelessly  neglected  to  give  either 
his  name  or  address.  I  feel  quite  badly 
about  it  because  I  am  sure  he  misunder 
stands  me,  and  he  distinctly  damped  my 
ardour  of  patriotism,  the  expression  of 
which  brought  me  under  the  ban  of  his  only 

76 


MY  BOLSHEVIST 


too  evident  displeasure.  I  take  for  granted 
that  he  is  not  a  member  of  the  Y.D.,  as  in 
that  case  I  am  sure  he  would  have  been 
more  sympathetic  with  my  humble  desire 
to  please. 

The  occasion  of  his  criticism  arose  at  the 
time  of  the  return  from  abroad  of  our  New 
England  Division  of  troops,  and  the  day 
selected  for  the  triumphal  parade  was  as 
cold  and  disagreeable  as  Boston  could  pro 
duce.  Part  of  the  procession  formed  in 
front  of  my  house,  and  as  I  watched  them 
from  my  library  window  I  bethought  my 
self  of  the  populace  sitting  on  the  five  miles 
of  grandstand  that  had  been  built  from 
which  to  view  the  four  miles  of  parade. 
They  did  not  worry  me  any  because  I  re 
garded  anybody  who  elected  of  their  own 
free  will  to  sit  there  for  five  mortal  hours  in 
such  weather  to  be  deserving  of  all  that  was 
coming  to  them.  My  maternal  heart,  how 
ever,  did  yearn  over  those  returned  boys, 
whose  C.O.s  may  have  been  admirable  offi 
cers  in  war,  but  did  not  know  enough  to  put 
overcoats  on  their  men  in  peace.  I  watched 

77 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


till  I  could  not  bear  it  another  minute,  and 
then  sent  out  to  collect  a  dozen  or  so  and 
bring  them  in  to  get  warm  by  the  big  open 
fire.  I  make  no  remarks  about  them.  When 
a  woman  gets  a  Colonel  and  a  Major,  a 
couple  of  Captains,  half  a  dozen  Lieuten 
ants  and  six-foot  two  of  an  adorable  Chap 
lain  making  themselves  agreeable,  it  is  no 
time  for  words,  but  action.  I  again  sent 
forth  my  emissary  to  procure  a  few  of  the 
best-looking  Y.M.C.A.  girls  waiting  about 
to  feed  the  men,  and  with  these  on  the  spot 
the  situation  was  rendered  entirely  satis 
factory.  Flushed  with  my  success,  my  heart 
opened  still  wider,  and  seeing  those  poor, 
shivering  privates  trying  to  eat  the  some 
what  unsympathetic  luncheon  provided 
for  them,  I  threw  wide  my  front  door  and 
invited  the  entire  battalion  to  make  my 
house  their  home.  My  heart,  however,  be 
ing  considerably  bigger  than  my  house, 
only  some  twenty-five  or  thirty  of  them 
were  able  to  squeeze  within  the  doors,  and 
though  the  accommodation  was  not  luxuri 
ous,  the  men  were  at  least  sheltered  from 

78 


MY  BOLSHEVIST 


the  bitter  cold  and  piercing  wind.  I  was 
really  a  proud  woman  that  day,  with  my 
house  filled  upstairs  and  down  with  the 
American  Expeditionary  Force.  Not  only 
were  they  all  such  clean,  trim,  fine-looking 
men  but  their  manners  and  ways  were 
above  reproach. 

When  they  had  thanked  me  civilly  and 
gone  back  to  their  ranks,  I  looked  around 
my  hall  and  thought  I  must  have  dreamed 
it  all.  We  have  a  good  many  young  people 
in  our  house  at  one  time  and  another,  and 
after  a  similar  gathering  among  my  own 
circle  of  friends,  my  first  act  after  their 
departure  is  usually  to  summon  all  the 
maids  and  a  char-woman  or  two  and  clean 
up.  I  gazed  about  me  with  bewildered  eyes 
and  fled  to  my  writing-desk,  where  I  burst 
uncontrollably  into  next  morning's  "Her 
ald"  with  the  following  outbreak  of  patri 
otic  appreciation. 

"  To  the  Editor  of  the  Herald. 

'*  I  must  confess  to  having  been  a  trifle 
satiated  with  the  laudations  of  our  troops 

79 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


returning  from  overseas.  They  seem  to  me 
to  have  been  rather  overdone  and  exagger 
ated,  but  since  the  parade  last  Friday  I 
should  like  to  express  my  praise  and  ap 
proval  of  the  training  and  discipline  of  the 
U.S.  Army  in  a  matter  which  I  consider  as 
being  of  primary  importance  and  really 
deserving  of  praise. 

' '  The  day  of  the  parade  was  unkindly  cold, 
and  it  would  have  been  blatantly  inhospi 
table  not  to  have  brought  some  of  the  shiv 
ering  men  into  one's  house  to  get  warm. 
(Incidentally,  had  I  been  the  C.O.,  I  should 
have  ordered  overcoats  to  be  worn.) 
Batches  of  blue-nosed  officers  wrarmed 
themselves  at  our  library  fire  and  (to  my 
unaccustomed  eyes)  a  whole  battalion  of 
enlisted  men  ate  their  lunch,  drank  their 
coffee,  and  smoked  their  cigarettes  in  our 
front  hall.  Now,  observe.  After  all  those 
men  had  civilly  thanked  us  and  gone,  not 
one  burnt  match,  nor  cigarette  stub,  nor 
crumb  of  food  was  found,  and  every  little 
empty  lunch-box  was  neatly  piled,  one 
upon  the  other,  at  the  side  of  the  hall  fire- 
So 


MY  BOLSHEVIST 


place!  May  I  enquire  if  the  U.S.  military 
authorities  could  be  persuaded  to  receive 
young  civilians  for  training  in  domestic 
principles?  "  To  which  I  appended  my  sig 
nature  and  address. 

My  enthusiasm  for  the  A.E.F.,  who  had 
so  appreciatively  accepted  the  best  I  had  to 
offer,  shed  a  glow  of  warmth  throughout  my 
patriotism,  and  I  had  that  rare  but  pleas 
ant  and  self-satisfied  feeling  that  steals 
over  one  when,  having  given  of  one's  best, 
it  has  been  appreciatively  received.  I  had 
no  doubt  but  that  Jews,  Turks,  infidels, 
and  heretics  had  pervaded  my  house  on 
that  day,  but  I  swelled  with  pride  to  think 
of  the  civilizing  and  ennobling  effect  that  a 
residence  in  the  U.S.A.  had  worked  upon 
them,  and  I  began  to  think  that  perhaps, 
after  all,  this  great  and  free  country  really 
was  the  true  Democracy  that  it  believes 
itself  to  be.  A  few  days  later  I  did  not  feel 
quite  so  sure  about  it.  I  received  through  the 
mail  awritten  communication,  upon  a  corner 
of  which,  cut  out  from  the  "Herald,"  was 
pasted  my  printed  letter.  It  ran  as  follows: 
81 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


"  Dear  Sir 

"Your  letter  is  an  exact  showing  up  of  the 
rich  American  idea  of  the  great  american 
democracy.  You  invite  the  officers  into 
your  library  but  the  privates  who  are  pre 
sumable  workingmen  in  private  life  must 
stay  in  the  hall  Why  not  have  them  all  in 
the  hall  or  all  in  the  library.  Do  men  of 
your  does  [sic]  think  that  even  in  Heaven 
and  Hell  the  officers  and  privates,  the 
workers  and  other  classes  of  society  will  be 
kept  apart  by  God.  These  are  the  things 
that  a  foreigner  cannot  understand  about 
your  boasted  democracy  and  free  country. 
You  shreik  and  brag  that  you  are  the  most 
democratic  country  in  the  world  and  the 
freest,  and  tell  me  wrhere  even  in  Russians 
palmy  days  can  you  find  so  much  police 
brutality  as  your  third  degree  and  your 
clubbing  and  shooting  in  Lawrence  and 
other  strikes.  Your  judicial  decissions,  one 
man  fined  for  stealing  thousands  and  an 
other  gets  10  years  for  assault  or  stealing 
a  dollar  or  two.  Mooney  in  jail  and  rich 
scroundles  walking  walking  the  streets. 

82 


MY  BOLSHEVIST 


Your  Senate  fighting  and  trying  to  be 
smirch  the  name  of  Mr.  Wilson  the  best 
President  that  ever  lived.  Working  men 
being  sent  to  jail  for  breaking  petty  city  by 
laws  and  rich  women  suffragettes  God  bless 
them  and  more  power  to  them,  who  know 
the  law  and  defie  the  judge  have  their  casis 
dismissed,  which  sho\vs  that  the  judge 
knows  the  law  is  illegal  and  has  only  been 
made  to  give  the  crooked  pols  lawyers  and 
judges  a  hold  over  the  people. 

"Yours  very  respectfully 
"A  foreign  born  worker  and  Citizen" 

It  did  not  discourage  me,  exactly,  but  it 
dimmed  the  radiance  of  my  patriotism  a 
bit.  That  he  mistook  my  letter  for  that  of  a 
man  is,  naturally,  highly  gratifying,  but  I 
do  so  much  regret  that  I  cannot  write  and 
ask  him  to  call  on  me,  for  there  is  so  much 
that  I  should  like  to  talk  to  him  about. 

I  want  dreadfully  to  explain  to  him  that 
the  size  of  my  library  being  only  some 
twenty  square  feet,  it  was  truly  less  aristo 
cratic  snobbishness  on  my  part  than  lack 

83 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


of  dimension  that  interfered  with  my  demo 
cratic  spirit.  I  have  not  the  slightest  doubt 
but  that  the  officers  would  cheerfully  have 
changed  places  with  the  privates  if  it 
would  have  made  them  any  happier,  and 
also  the  hall  would  have  been  more  com 
fortable  because  it  is  so  much  bigger,  and 
there  was  more  to  sit  on,  barring  the  floor, 
than  there  was  upstairs;  but  after  anxious 
consultation  since  then  with  an  army  offi 
cer,  I  am  assured  that  the  military  man 
oeuvres  necessary  to  have  effected  the 
change  in  the  space  at  command,  would 
have  resulted  in  a  total  loss  of  all  troops 
engaged,  so  my  conscience  is  clear.  As  to 
my  friend's  genial  sociability  in  desiring 
that  we  should  all  be  together,  I  am  still 
uncertain  as  to  whether  his  education  in 
army  etiquette  is  incomplete,  or  whether 
he  is  a  military  twin  of  our  Secretary  of 
the  Navy. 

The  oftener  I  read  his  letter,  the  more  I 
regret  his  self-forgetfulness  in  omitting  his 
name  and  address,  because  there  are  so 
many  points  that  I  feel  we  hold  in  common 

84 


MY  BOLSHEVIST 


in  spite  of  a  few  perfectly  natural  mistakes 
on  his  part.  My  portrait,  which  he  presents 
to  the  public  as  that  of  a  "rich  American," 
is  not  nearly  so  exact  as  I  could  wish,  but 
the  mistake  is  not  so  much  his  fault  as  it  is 
my  misfortune.  In  no  way  can  one  be  more 
tragically  misunderstood,  by  the  world  in 
general  and  one's  friends  in  particular,  than 
by  living  on  Beacon  Street.  The  misfortune 
of  a  residence  on  Commonwealth  Avenue 
does  not  compare  with  it  —  for  which,  be 
ing  jealous  for  the  reputation  of  the  older 
street,  I  am  content  to  suffer.  I  have  sup 
ported  this  injustice  so  long  that  I  have 
almost  become  inured  to  the  hardship  and 
pay  the  penalty  without  a  murmur.  Had 
my  gentleman  friend  been  of  a  less  retiring 
disposition,  I  could  have  explained  all  this 
to  him,  with  apologies.  But  let  this  pass. 
I  agree  with  him  entirely  that  the  privates 
in  the  army  are  working-men  in  private 
life.  They  are,  but  it  seems  superfluous  to 
make  such  a  point  of  it;  so  are  the  officers, 
so  is  my  husband,  whose  hospitality  offi 
cers  and  men  alike  so  courteously  accepted. 

85 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


I  work  myself,  so  far  as  that  goes,  and  he 
hurts  my  feelings  when  he  makes  these 
invidious  distinctions;  and  the  trouble  is 
that  he  does  n't  care  whether  he  hurts 
them  or  not.  I  am  a  lot  more  anxious  to 
spare  his  feelings  than  he  is  to  spare  mine, 
wherein  I  boldly  state  that  I  am  the  better 
democrat  of  the  two. 

He  evidently  agrees  with  me  that  differ 
ent  classes  do  exist,  because  he  insists  upon 
putting  me  off  in  a  corner  with  other  men 
of  "your  does,"  and  firing  theological 
questions  at  my  head.  Here,  I  deeply  regret 
to  say,  I  cannot  help  him.  I  am  no  theolo 
gian,  but  I  have  a  strong  feeling  that  any 
attempt  to  settle  the  social  arrangements 
in  the  next  world  is  but  a  work  of  super 
erogation.  Personally,  my  hands  are  more 
than  full  enough  in  my  frantic  endeavours 
to  accommodate  myself  to  the  existing 
conditions  of  the  immediate  present.  I 
should  like  to  impress  my  views  upon  him 
and  beg  him  not  to  worry  so  much  over  the 
religio-social  outlook  for  the  future  in 
either  of  the  two  places  he  mentions,  but 
86 


MY  BOLSHEVIST 


to  devote  his  mental  energies  to  the  accom 
plishment  of  a  little  missionary  work  in 
Boston,  Massachusetts,  in  the  present. 

Had  he  thus  occupied  himself  previously 
to  writing  me,  he  might  not  have  held  such 
unfortunate  opinions  with  regard  to  the 
police,  in  the  which  he  has  my  deep  sym 
pathy,  for  I  have  suffered  a  good  deal  from 
that  organization  myself.  I  have  not  yet 
been  subjected  to  the  "third  degree,"  nor 
did  I  join  any  of  my  erstwhile  friends  who 
journeyed  joyously  to  Lawrence  in  their 
yearning  to  benefit  mankind,  but  I  will 
admit  that  I  have  experienced  a  "brutal 
ity"  of  language  that  has  aroused  within 
my  breast  a  spirit  of  revolt  unequalled 
by  the  defiance  of  the  maddest  Bolshevik. 
However,  I  draw  a  long  breath  of  relief  as 
I  remember  that  these  experiences  are  a 
matter  of  the  past.  My  friend  wrote  before 
the  Coming  of  the  State  Guard,  whose 
example  has  been  such  that  I  have  not 
been  insulted  by  a  policeman  since  the  new 
force  went  on  duty.  I  had  long  since  be 
come  inured  to  the  fact  that  rudeness  and 

87 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


incivility,  on  the  part  of  Government  em 
ployees  of  the  United  States,  was  a  badge 
of  office  and  a  declaration  of  perfect  equal 
ity.  I  had  ceased  to  feel  it  a  personal  insult 
to  be  called  to  the  telephone  by  a  depart 
ment  of  the  Municipality,  and  greeted  with 
the  remark,  "Say,  you  get  them  ash  barrels 
out  earlier  or  I  can't  empty  'em";  or  to  be 
told  by  the  policeman  at  a  street-crossing 
that  I  am  old  enough  to  know  better  than 
to  try  to  cross  in  front  of  an  electric  car. 
I  am  convinced  that  both  the  Government 
and  the  policeman  had  my  true  welfare  at 
heart,  only  they  did  not  know  how  to  ex 
press  it,  servility  and  civility  being  inex 
tricably  mixed  in  their  minds.  But  the 
recent  glorious  change  in  the  personnel  of 
the  police  force  gives  me  reasonable  en 
couragement  to  hope  that  the  improvement 
in  one  body  may  spread  in  other  directions. 
My  friend  unquestionably  was  not  search 
ing  for  points  of  harmony  between  himself 
and  "men"  of  my  class,  and  I  am  afraid  it 
would  be  a  bitter  disappointment  to  him 
if  he  could  know  how  wholly  I  am  at  one 
88 


MY  BOLSPIEVIST 


with  him  in  his  criticism  that  my  people 
<;  shreik  and  brag  "  of  being  the  "  most  dem 
ocratic  country  in  the  world  and  the  fre 
est."  In  this  matter  he  shows  a  perspicuity 
and  clearness  of  judgement  that  do  him 
credit.  There  is  only  one  truly  democratic 
country  in  this  world,  and  it  is  not  the 
United  States  of  America,  but  one  would 
hardly  expect  a  foreigner  to  have  seized 
the  point  with  such  precision,  or  to  have 
described  it  so  graphically  in  a  few  brief 
words.  Here,  however,  is  the  really  crown 
ing  point  of  my  desire  to  meet  him  face  to 
face,  for  I  long  to  comfort  him  by  the  as 
surance  that  he  has  the  remedy  for  his  dis 
satisfaction  entirely  in  his  own  hands,  a  fact 
which  he  has  obviously  overlooked.  Noth 
ing  pains  me  more  deeply  than  any  attempt 
to  detain  an  unwilling  guest,  and  if  he  is 
not  happy  in  this  bragging  and  shrieking 
country,  not  one  clause  in  the  Constitution, 
nor  a  single  law  of  the  land  compels  him  to 
stay  here.  In  that  one  particular,  at  all 
events,  we  bravely  live  up  to  our  brag  of 
being  the  freest  country  in  the  world,  and 
89 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


he  is  perfectly  at  liberty  to  seek  another 
and  more  modest  home.  He  would  not  be 
called  upon  even  to  pay  his  own  travelling 
expenses,  for  we  are  a  generous  nation,  and 
are  willing  to  be  put  to  some  expense  in 
order  to  be  as  free  as  we  brag  of  being. 

Yes;  I  regret  deeply  that  I  can  never 
meet  my  Bolshevist  friend.  I  am  sure  we 
would  have  had  something  in  common  and 
more  of  mutual  understanding  had  we  been 
able  to  talk  of  these  things  face  to  face,  as 
Mr.  Gompers  has  assured  us  is  the  proper 
course  to  pursue.  His  whole  letter  was  of 
very  real  interest  to  me,  and  at  no  point 
more  so  than  in  its  ending.  Having  eased 
his  soul  by  expression  of  opinion,  my  friend 
forgot  himself,  and  unconsciously  reverted 
to  a  law  of  nature  that  is  stronger  than  any 
acquired  democracy  or  Bolshevist  ambi 
tions;  one  which  in  the  long  run  will  win 
out,  though  neither  my  friend  nor  I  will 
live  to  see  it.  He  signs  himself  —  "Yours 
very  respectfully." 

Human  nature  will  out  in  spite  of  all 
exertions  to  the  contrary,  and  beneath  all 
90 


MY  BOLSHEVIST 


its  visions  of  Equality  and  Democracy, 
normal,  healthy,  human  nature  demands  a 
form  of  government  that  is  monarchical  in 
its  essentials.  In  this,  you  see,  my  friend 
thinks  he  differs  from  me.  He  is  artificially 
convinced  that  army  officers  and  privates, 
he  and  I,  are  all  of  a  glorious  equality,  but 
when  he  has  got  himself  and  his  opinions 
off  his  mind,  he  inadvertently  acknowl 
edges  that  he  is  bound  to  hold  me  in  re 
spect;  and  the  crux  of  the  whole  socialistic 
theory  lies  in  the  answer  to  the  question 
as  to  whether  his  involuntary  respect  is 
elicited  because  I  live  on  Beacon  Street,  or 
because  I  have  tried  to  share  what  I  have 
at  my  command  with  my  fellow-beings.  It 
is  bound  to  be  the  one  or  the  other,  and  the 
conviction  makes  just  all  the  difference  in 
the  world.  Unconsciously  he  admits  de 
grees  of  "class,"  and  if  I  could  only  get  at 
the  real,  honest,  human  side  of  him,  I  be 
lieve  that  he  would  admit  it  consciously. 

It  has  been  said  that  "a  genuine  aris 
tocracy  of  brains  and  breeding  are  vital  to 
national  health,"  to  which  I  add  that  of 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


birth  and  heart  as  well,  and  in  defence 
of  which  creed  I  have  set  up  my  standard. 
I  foresee  a  long  and  temporarily  adverse 
battle,  but  I  go  down  to  my  unwept  grave 
with  my  flags  flying. 


VI 

OLD  FRIENDS 


VI 

OLD  FRIENDS 

ON  leaving  the  house  after  lunch  the 
other  day,  my  favourite  nephew  re 
marked  casually,  "Oh,  Auntie,  will  you 
please  find  Bernard  Shaw's  'Arms  and  the 
Man'  for  me;  I  ;want  it  to  read  this  eve 
ning."  He  is  the  joy  of  my  life,  and  the  stay 
and  support  of  my  declining  years,  and  all 
that  sort  of  thing,  and  of  course  it  is  a 
privilege  and  a  pleasure  to  do  anything  for 
him,  but  I  sat  heavily  down  upon  the  low 
est  stair  with  despair  in  my  heart  at  the 
thought  of  hunting  out  that  small  volume 
from  a  room  full  of  books.  I  had  every  in 
tention  of  making  personal  remarks  to  him 
upon  the  desirability  of  doing  for  one's  self, 
but  he  saw  them  coming  and  hastily  shut 
the  door  behind  him. 

I  do  not  know  exactly  how  many  books 
we  have  in  our  library;  when  I  turned-to 
with  the  other  char-woman  this  autumn 
and  helped  to  clean  them,  I  estimated  the 

95 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


number  at  about  seven  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand,  and  out  of  that  collection,  the 
"joy  of  my  life"  expected  me  to  put  my 
hand  upon  that  very  small  and  unobtru 
sive  volume.  Really,  I  did  not  know  where 
to  begin  the  search.  However,-  when  the 
"stay  and  support"  expects  me  to  do  a 
thing,  I  usually  find  it  cheaper  in  the  end 
to  do  it.  Last  year  he  did  not  approve  of 
a  hat  I  wore,  and  told  me  that  he  "ex 
pected"  me  to  get  a  new  one.  The  next 
time  I  appeared  in  the  old  one,  he  gently 
but  firmly  removed  it  from  my  head  and 
placed  it  carefully  in  the  very  middle  of 
the  brightly  glowing  fire.  This  is  quite  ir 
relevant,  but  I  mention  it  in  order  to  show 
that  it  was  really  necessary  for  me  to  find 
that  book,  and  to  excuse  myself  for  the 
following  burst  of  literary  appreciation 
which  will  probably  interest  no  one  but 
myself. 

That  search  took  me  the  whole  of  one 

morning  and  most  of  the  afternoon,  but  1 

must  confess  that  I  lingered  by  the  way. 

As  I  passed  patiently  from  one  shelf  to  an- 

96 


OLD  FRIENDS 


other,  so  many  old  friends  called  to  me  for 
recognition  that  I  could  not  resist  stopping 
for  a  chat  with  them,  and  I  enjoyed  myself 
immensely.  Their  serene  indifference  to  the 
neglect  of  modern  readers  was  positively 
refreshing,  and  they  and  I  agreed  that  they 
need  fear  no  rivals  because  so  few  of  them 
exist.  Real,  true  people  do  not  live  between 
the  covers  of  a  book  any  more ;  for  the  most 
part,  they  are  only  characters  in  fiction, 
and  I  could  no  more  make  a  friend  of  a 
modern  "character"  than  I  could  make 
love  to  a  figure  in  a  movie.  I  know  because 
I  have  tried,  and  with  regrettably  few  ex 
ceptions  have  lamentably  failed. 

After  much  deep  consideration  of  the 
subject,  I  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  cause  of  my  failure  is  owing  to  the  fact 
that  the  progenitors  of  the  many  pleasant 
acquaintances  I  make  in  modern  fiction 
will  permit  me  no  intimacy  in  the  daily  life 
of  their  offspring.  I  am  allowed  to  associate 
with  them  only  upon  sensational  occasions 
or  under  equivocal  circumstances,  neither 
of  which  are  conducive  to  real  friendship. 

97 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


I  cannot  possibly  make  friends  with  people 
when  I  meet  them  only  in  a  motor  smash- 
up,  or  indulging  in  conversation  of  such 
breadth  and  brilliancy  that  I  should  never 
dare  converse  with  them  myself.  Of  course 
I  may  be  unfortunate  in  my  choice  of  hosts 
or  guests,  but  I  seldom  hear  in  real  life 
such  appallingly  clever  conversations  as 
those  I  read  in  books.  I  regard  this  as 
providential  because  otherwise  I  should  be 
obliged  to  stay  at  home,  but  the  conver 
sations  of  my  recent  fictional  acquaint 
ances  is  of  so  broad  and  ambitious  a  scope 
that  there  is  little  place  for  individualities 
to  appear. 

Those  of  us  who  were  privileged  to  make 
our  first  voyages  across  the  seas  of  liter 
ature  in  the  stately  "three-deckers"  of  the 
seventies  and  eighties,  find  a  good  deal  of 
difficulty  in  accommodating  ourselves  to 
the  submarine-chasers  by  which  they  are 
replaced.  I  do  not  wholly  disparage  them; 
they  have  merits  of  their  own,  but  I  some 
times  find  them  conducive  to  mat  de  mer. 
The  voyage  is  accompanied  by  fewer  dis- 
98 


OLD  FRIENDS 


comforts,  perhaps;  we  travel  more  rapidly 
and  are  in  no  danger  of  getting  into  "the 
doldrums"  (occasionally  we  wish  that  we 
did),  and  we  certainly  get  to  our  destina 
tion  in  half  the  time  —  a  consummation 
vehemently  demanded  by  the  modern 
reader,  but  one  misses  the  old  maritime 
and  social  amenities.  You  get  aboard  your 
story  and  are  at  once  introduced  to  a  tell 
ing  episode  in  the  life  of  one  or  more  of 
your  fellow  passengers,  after  which  you 
skip  breathlessly  from  one  high  light  to 
another  in  their  careers  till  you  leave  them 
at  the  end  of  the  voyage  feeling  much  more 
as  if  their  author  had  taken  you  to  a  movie 
than  introduced  you  to  any  real  people. 
Personally,  I  am  frequently  quite  satisfied 
to  let  my  acquaintanceship  end  right  there. 
They  are  not  the  kind  of  people  with  whom 
I  crave  friendship,  but  I  do  regret  the  old- 
time  story  in  which  we  lived  the  life  of  the 
characters,  and  learned  to  know  and  care 
for  them  as  friends. 

Anybody  who  was  fortunate  enough  to 
begin    his    literary    excursions    under    the 

99 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


kindly  auspices  of  Jacob  Abbot,  acquired 
a  taste  for  detail  that  can  never  be  wholly 
eradicated.  We  did  not  just  read  about 
Phonny  and  Malleville,  we  played  with 
them;  \ve  knew  what  they  had  for  supper 
and  what  time  they  went  to  bed.  We  loved 
dear,  gentle  Mary  Bell,  and  I  am  perfectly 
convinced  that  whatever  I  may  possess  of 
moral  worth  is  owing  far  more  to  the  ex 
ample  of  the  unparagoned  Beechnut  than 
to  any  parental  instruction  I  ever  im 
patiently  received. 

With  Rollo,  I  must  admit  that  I  was 
never  quite  so  intimate,  but  that  was  be 
cause  his  parents  and  his  Uncle  George 
were  always  so  much  in  evidence  and  never 
let  him  alone.  Of  course  he  crossed  the 
Atlantic  alone  with  that  indeterminate 
little  sister  Jenny,  but  they  made  so  many 
instructive  friends  aboard  that  they  might 
just  as  well  have  been  confided  to  their  care 
in  the  beginning,  and  they  never  had  a  real 
adventure  all  the  way  over.  I  always  dis 
trusted  Uncle  George  after  his  carelessness 
in  missing  that  boat,  and  I  am  perfectly 
100 


OLD  FRIENDS 


sure  that  he  took  the  money  which  he  told 
Rollo  he  had  "credited  to  his  account"  and 
had  a  good  time  with  it  himself  in  Paris. 
Malleville  rather  liked  Rollo,  I  think,  be 
cause  he  wore  such  beautiful  clothes,  but 
Phonny  and  I  could  not  bear  him  because 
he  never  got  into  scrapes  and  we  always 
did.  Besides,  Jonas  did  not  like  Beechnut. 
Rollo  thought  everything  that  Jonas  did 
was  perfect,  while  Phonny  and  I  knew 
quite  well  that  he  was  not  "half  as  smart" 
as  Beechnut,  so,  naturally,  the  relations 
between  Rollo  and  us  were  strained.  Did 
you  ever  know  that  Beechnut  was  just 
thirteen  years  of  age?  Until  I  grew  up  and 
asked  him,  I  never  doubted  but  that  he 
was  forty.  He  really  was  an  extraordinarily 
clever  youth.  How  desperately  I  envied 
that  rocking-horse  he  made  for  Phonny, 
and  I  have  not  yet  recovered  from  my  awe 
at  his  erudition  in  naming  it  "Polypod." 
It  bumped  you  a  good  deal  when  you  rode 
on  it,  but  I  have  always  attributed  the  ex 
cellent  condition  of  my  liver  in  later  life  to 
the  exercise  afforded  by  Poly  pod's  gait. 

101 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


I  think  Aunt  Henry  must  have  believed 
much  more  in  the  freedom  of  the  individual 
than  did  Mrs.  Holiday,  for  she  gave  Phonny 
and  Malleville  a  good  deal  of  liberty,  and 
she  never  fussed,  even  over  Malleville,  but 
she  was  really  very  much  worried  upon  that 
occasion  when  her  husband  insisted  upon 
taking  her  away  with  him,  and  she  was 
obliged  to  leave  the  children  in  the  care 
of  the  domestics,  "particularly  Hepzibah." 
You  see,  Malleville  was  a  very  feeble  child 
with  respect  to  health,  and  subject  to  seri 
ous  fits  of  illness,  and  I  am  sure  that  Aunt 
Henry  would  never  have  consented  to  go 
had  she  not  been  sure  that  Beechnut  would 
oversee  affairs  in  her  absence.  When  I  con 
trast  Uncle  George's  carelessness  about 
that  boat  with  the  intelligence  with  which 
Beechnut  met  his  responsibilities,  I  feel 
that  she  was  entirely  justified  in  her  con 
fidence.  Neither  Uncle  George  nor  Jonas 
would  have  known  half  as  well  as  Beechnut 
what  to  do  the  night  Malleville  had  croup; 
in  fact  I  could  not  have  handled  the  situ 
ation  better  myself.  It  was  so  sensible  of 

102 


OLD  FRIENDS 


him  to  send  directly  for  Mary  Bell  instead 
of  calling  upon  Hepzibah,  who  was  not 
only  very  busy,  but  frankly  admitted  that 
she  knew  nothing  about  illness,  while  Mary 
Bell  (aged  twelve)  was  an  expert  in  nursing. 
She  immediately  soaked  Malleville's  feet 
in  hot  mustard  and  water  which  was  ex 
actly  the  right  thing  to  do.  Dear  Mary  Bell, 
I  named  an  old  sheep  after  her  once,  and 
no  name  could  have  been  more  appropriate. 
I  loved  Phonny  and  Malleville  dearly,  and 
I  wonder  if  Phonny  still  throws  back  his 
head  and  "laughs  long  and  merrily." 

Of  course  I  did  not  meet  Phonny  and 
Malleville  on  this  occasion  in  the  library. 
They  live  in  the  nursery  where  they  prop 
erly  belong,  and  the  first  person  who  greeted 
me  as  I  began  my  search  was  that  incom 
parable  writer  Charlotte  M.  Yonge  and 
her  prolific  literary  families.  She  made  her 
reputation,  I  believe,  on  "The  Heir  of  Red- 
clyffe."  It  was  the  most  voluptuously  sad 
book  I  ever  read;  one  fairly  wallowed  in 
pathos  from  beginning  to  end,  but  how  we 
did  enjoy  it.  I  always  loved  Jo  of  "Little 

103 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


Women,"  but  never  so  dearly  as  when  I 
found  her  up  in  the  garret  one  day,  eating 
apples  and  crying  over  the  sorrows  of  Guy 
and  Amy.  Philip  was  the  most  hateful  prig 
that  ever  lived  between  the  pages  of  a 
book.  He  was  always  putting  Guy  in  the 
wrong  and  taking  advantage  of  it,  while 
Guy  suffered  all  sorts  of  unjust  afflictions 
with  a  truly  edifying  resignation.  Then 
Philip  fell  ill  of  a  contagious  fever  through 
which  Guy  altruistically  insisted  upon 
nursing  him  and,  of  course,  Guy  died  and 
Philip  got  well,  only,  to  my  vindictive  sat 
isfaction,  to  be  dogged  through  life  by  a 
gnawing  remorse.  He  deserved  it.  We  may 
laugh  at  it  all  now,  but  after  all,  I  reflect 
thoughtfully,  it  was  acknowledged  to  be  a 
very  true  picture  of  that  period  and  I  recall 
no  similar  mental  portrait  of  to-day.  By 
the  time  I  had  reached  this  particular  shelf, 
I  had  a  suspicion  that  I  was  wasting  time, 
but  at  that  moment  I  incautiously  opened 
"The  Clever  Woman  of  the  Family"  at 
the  scene  where  Rachel  expresses  her 
views  to  Ermine  on  the  subject  of  "cura- 

104 


OLD  FRIENDS 


tolatry,"  and  I  deliberately  sat  down  cross- 
legged  on  the  floor  till  I  had  read  it  through. 
Rachel  may  have  been  only  a  character  in 
a  story  book  written  sixty  years  ago,  but  I 
defy  any  one  to  deny  that  they  number  her 
among  their  family  or  friends  to-day. 
"The  Dove  in  the  Eagle's  Nest"  and 
"The  Chaplet  of  Pearls"  are  charming 
stories  that  retain  their  power  to  please 
even  many  modern  readers,  but  our  really 
intimate  and  never-dying  friendships  were 
with  the  families  of  May  and  Underwood. 
There  was  never  anybody  to  compare  with 
them  —  in  quality  or  quantity.  The  May 
family  consisted  of  a  father  and  mother 
and  eleven  children,  and  the  Reverend  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Underwood  were  blessed  with  six 
daughters  and  seven  sons.  Every  single 
one  of  those  twenty-eight  people  was  so 
clearly  drawn  and  definite,  so  wholly  alive 
and  real,  that  throughout  the  course  of 
their  lives,  which,  in  the  various  books, 
covered  a  period  of  at  least  fifty  years, 
they  were  absolutely  distinct  in  character 
and  development.  We  lived  the  daily  life 

105 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


of  those  friends  of  ours;  we  breakfasted, 
lunched,  dined,  and  had  ten  o'clock  P.M. 
tea  with  them.  We  rejoiced  in  their  joys 
and  sorrowed  in  their  griefs,  and  if  I  could 
ever  find  a  physician  of  Dr.  May's  charms 
and  qualifications,  I  should  welcome  any 
illness  that  brought  me  under  his  care;  but 
they  don't  grow  any  more.  Nowadays  I 
seem  to  stand  midway  between  the  two 
epochs;  on  the  one  hand  regarding  the 
licence  of  the  offspring  of  my  generation 
with  hair-raising  horror,  yet  acknowledg 
ing  that  it  really  was  a  little  hard  on 
Margaret  May  that  maidenliness  forbade 
her  to  go  to  w^alk  with  a  young  man,  even 
though  escorted  by  an  elderly  governess 
and  a  large  assortment  of  small  brothers 
and  sisters.  Her  modesty  was  entirely  un 
availing,  too,  for  she  later  became  engaged 
to  him  and  they  both  died  —  of  course. 

The  Underwoods  had  a  much  harder  life 
than  the  Mays,  for  they  were  left  orphaned 
and  poverty-stricken  when  the  oldest  of 
them  was  only  sixteen,  but  surely  there 
never  was  so  capable  and  methodical  a 
1 06 


OLD  FRIENDS 


person  as  Wilmet.  She  brought  up  that 
family  of  brothers  and  sisters  with  a  capa 
bility  and  success  that  to  this  day  fills  me 
with  awe  and  envious  admiration.  I  know 
the  bears  will  come  out  and  eat  me  up  as 
they  did  Elisha's  other  disrespectful  young 
friends,  but  I  cannot  help  a  certain  mild 
feeling  of  vindictive  satisfaction  in  the 
knowledge  that  Wilmet's  own  two  boys 
turned  out  rather  badly.  They  were  once 
found  to  be  slightly  under  the  influence  of 
liquor,  and  it  upset  the  entire  family  con 
nexion  for  a  fortnight.  It  is  the  fashion  to 
laugh  at  Miss  Yonge,  but  let  the  admirers 
of  modern  fiction  say  what  they  will,  her 
character-drawing  has  never  been  sur 
passed.  She  began  with  her  characters 
when  they  were  born,  and  those  who  did 
not  die  by  the  way,  she  carried  on  long 
past  middle  life,  each  one  developing  un 
mistakably  along  his  or  her  own  lines.  Even 
in  their  children,  one  found  the  character 
istics  of  their  parents.  Such  clearness  as 
this  shows  talent  of  no  mean  order,  and  she 
is  an  author  much  neglected  even  by  those 

107 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


who  are  old  enough  to  take  pleasure  in 
something  better  than  murders  and  im 
moralities. 

Reluctantly  I  bade  Charlotte  Mary  good 
bye  and  prepared  conscientiously  to  con 
tinue  my  search  for  Bernard  Shaw,  but  just 
then  a  person  quite  different  from  them 
both  obtruded  himself  upon  my  notice; 
Geoffrey  Hamlyn  came  breezily  across  the 
downs  to  greet  me,  and  my  good  intentions 
went  to  join  my  large  collections  of  them 
in  the  place  where  good  intentions  belong. 

Henry  Kingsley  is  an  author  who  has 
suffered  much  from  the  (in  my  opinion) 
far  less  deserved  literary  fame  of  his  brother 
Charles,  who  (again  in  my  opinion)  was  a 
prig.  From  the  very  scant  amount  of  ma 
terial  that  exists,  I  gather  that  Henry  may 
not  have  conformed  with  entire  particular 
ity  to  the  somewhat  severe  and  narrow 
standards  of  his  family,  and  shortly  after 
leaving  Oxford,  minus  a  degree,  he  either 
betook  himself,  or,  as  I  shrewdly  suspect, 
was  incontinently  shipped  off  to  Australia. 
Here  he  found  material  for  "one  of  the 
1 08 


OLD  FRIENDS 


finest  pieces  of  fiction  ever  composed."  Yet 
in  the  biography  of  his  brother  Charles, 
a  ponderous  tome  of  a  thousand  or  more 
pages,  "containing  abundant  letters  and 
no  indiscretions,"  neither  Henry's  name 
nor  his  books  are  once  mentioned.  (In  the 
rough  copy  of  this  chapter  I  had  here  de 
voted  a  long  paragraph  to  the  expression 
of  my  opinion  of  Mr.  Charles  Kingsley's 
attitude  toward  his  brother  Henry,  but 
when  I  sat  down  to  typewrite  the  manu 
script  I  reflected  thoughtfully  upon  the 
feelings  of  my  publishers.  They  frequently 
show  a  highly  commendable  sensitiveness 
regarding  the  feelings  of  other  people, 
even  when  they  are  dead,  and  so  I  decided 
to  "blue-pencil"  the  paragraph  myself,  be 
fore  they  ordered  me  to  do  so.  However,  I 
feel  much  better  since  I  wrote  it  all  out, 
and  I  can  still  read  it  in  private  to  my 
friends.)  Many  people  tell  me  how  they 
loved  "Amy as  Leigh,"  but  would  they  sit 
down  to  read  about  him  now?  Would  any 
body  wade  through  "Alton  Locke"  unless 
in  search  of  a  defunct  socialism?  Go  to! 
109 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


Sam  Buckley  and  Charles  Ravenshoe  will 
be  true  and  living  friends  long  after  Charles 
Kingsley's  books  are  out  of  print  and  for 
gotten. 

Never  was  there  so  gallant  a  gentleman 
as  Sam  Buckley.  I  would  have  married  him 
myself  in  a  minute  had  he  only  given  me 
the  chance,  but  he  fell  a  victim  to  the  su 
perior  charms  of  Alice  Brentwood,  whose 
acquaintance  he  made  under  such  enchant 
ing  circumstances  that  it  was  impossible 
to  resist  the  temptation  of  re-living  that 
wonderful  half-hour  with  him. 

"Sam  went  to  the  club  with  his  im 
mortal  namesake,  bullied  Bennett  Lang- 
don,  argued  with  Beauclerk,  put  down 
Goldsmith,  and  extinguished  Boswell.  But 
it  was  too  hot  to  read;  so  he  let  the  book 
fall  on  his  lap  and  lay  a-dreaming. 

"What  a  delicious  verandah  this  is  to 
dream  in!  Through  the  tangled  passion 
flowers,  jessamines,  and  magnolias  what  a 
soft  gleam  of  bright,  hazy  distance,  over 
the  plains  and  far  away!  The  deep  river 
glen  cleaves  the  tableland,  which,  here  and 
no 


OLD  FRIENDS 


there,  swells  into  breezy  downs.  Beyond, 
miles  away  to  the  north,  is  a  great  forest 
barrier,  above  which  there  is  a  blaze  of  late 
snow,  sending  strange  light  aloft  into  the 
burning  haze.  All  this  is  seen  through  an 
arch  in  the  dark  mass  of  verdure  which 
clothes  the  trellis-work,  only  broken 
through  in  this  one  place,  as  though  to 
make  a  frame  for  the  picture.  He  leans 
back  and  gives  himself  up  to  watching 
trifles. 

"See  here.  A  magpie  comes  furtively  out 
of  the  house  with  a  key  in  his  mouth,  and 
seeing  Sam,  stops  to  consider  if  he  is  likely 
to  betray  him.  On  the  whole  he  thinks  not; 
so  he  hides  the  key  in  a  crevice  and  whistles 
a  tune. 

"  Now  enters  a  cockatoo,  waddling  along 
comfortably  and  talking  to  himself.  He 
tries  to  enter  into  conversation  with  the 
magpie,  who,  however,  cuts  him  dead,  and 
walks  off  to  look  at  the  prospect. 

"Flop!  Flop!  A  great  foolish-looking 
kangaroo  comes  through  the  house  and 
peers  round  him.  The  cockatoo  addresses 
in 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


a  few  remarks  to  him,  which  he  takes  no 
notice  of,  but  goes  blundering  out  into  the 
garden,  right  over  the  contemplative  mag 
pie,  who  gives  him  two  or  three  indignant 
pecks  on  his  clumsy  feet,  and  sends  him 
flying  down  the  gravel  walk. 

"Two  bright-eyed  little  kangaroo-rats 
come  out  of  their  box  peering  and  blinking. 
The  cockatoo  finds  an  audience  in  them, 
for  they  sit  listening  to  him,  now  and  then 
catching  a  flea,  or  rubbing  the  backs  of 
their  heads  with  their  fore-paws.  But  a 
buck  'possum,  who  stealthily  descends  by 
a  pillar  from  unknown  realms  of  mischief 
on  the  top  of  the  house,  evidently  dis 
credits  cockey's  stories,  and  departs  down 
the  garden  to  see  if  he  can  find  something 
to  eat. 

"An  old  cat  comes  up  the  garden  walk, 
accompanied  by  a  wicked  kitten,  who  am 
bushes  round  the  corner  of  the  flower-bed, 
and  pounces  out  on  her  mother,  knocking 
her  down  and  severely  maltreating  her. 
But  the  old  lady  picks  herself  up  without 
a  murmur,  and  comes  into  the  verandah 

112 


OLD  FRIENDS 


followed  by  her  unnatural  offspring,  ready 
for  any  mischief.  The  kangaroo-rats  retire 
into  their  box,  and  the  cockatoo,  rather 
nervous,  lays  himself  out  to  be  agreeable. 

"But  the  puppy,  born  under  an  unlucky 
star,  who  has  been  watching  all  these  things 
from  behind  his  mother,  thinks  at  last, 
'Here  is  some  one  to  play  with,'  so  he 
comes  staggering  forth  and  challenges  the 
kitten  to  a  lark. 

"She  receives  him  with  every  symptom 
of  disgust  and  abhorrence,  but  he,  regard 
less  of  all  spitting  and  tail-swelling,  rolls 
her  over,  spurring  and  swearing,  and  makes 
believe  he  will  worry  her  to  death.  Her 
scratching  and  biting  tell  but  little  on  his 
woolly  hide,  and  he  seems  to  have  the  best 
of  it  out  and  out,  till  a  new  ally  appears 
unexpectedly,  and  quite  turns  the  tables. 
The  magpie  hops  up,  ranges  alongside  the 
combatants,  and  catches  the  puppy  such  a 
dig  over  the  tail  as  sends  him  howling  to 
his  mother  with  a  flea  in  his  ear. 

"Sam  lay  sleepily  amused  by  this  little 
drama;  then  he  looked  at  the  bright  green 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


arch  which  separated  the  dark  verandah 
from  the  bright  hot  garden.  The  arch  was 
darkened,  and  looking  he  saw  something 
which  made  his  heart  move  strangely, 
something  he  has  not  forgotten  yet,  and 
never  will. 

"Under  the  arch  between  the  sunlight 
and  the  shade,  bareheaded,  dressed  in 
white,  stood  a  girl,  so  amazingly  beautiful, 
that  Sam  wondered  for  a  few  moments 
whether  he  was  asleep  or  awake.  ...  A  girl 
so  beautiful  that  I  in  all  my  life  never  saw 
her  superior.  They  showed  me  the  other 
day,  in  a  carriage  in  the  park,  one  they  said 
was  the  most  beautiful  girl  in  England,  a 
descendant  of  I  know  not  how  many  noble 
men.  But  looking  back  to  the  times  I  am 
speaking  of  now,  I  said  at  once  and  de 
cidedly,  'Alice  Brentwood  twenty  years 
ago  was  more  beautiful  than  she. ' ' 

Under  such  circumstances  he  could 
hardly  help  falling  in  love  with  anybody.  I 
very  nearly  spent  the  rest  of  the  day  with 
Sam,  and  Major  Buckley,  and  Jim  Brent- 
wood,  and  Dr.  Mulhaus,  who  was  n't  Dr. 
114 


OLD  FRIENDS 


Mulhaus  at  all,  but  a  most  distinguished 
German  baron,  and  almost  more  fascinat 
ing  than  Sam  himself.  Dear  Dr.  Mulhaus. 
I  am  glad  he  could  not  possibly  have  lived 
till  1914,  for  his  great  heart  had  already 
been  nearly  broken  by  his  country's  base 
ness,  and  he  could  not  have  borne  her  dis 
grace.  I  had  to  tear  myself  away  from  him 
to  greet  Charles  Ravenshoe,  happy  and 
contented  after  the  tragedies  of  his  life, 
and  welcoming  me  with  a  smile. 

Really,  the  people  in  my  library  are  most 
heterogeneously  placed.  Who  in  the  world 
should  I  find  living  next  door  to  Charles 
Ravenshoe  but  dear  Miss  Matty  Jenkyns! 
Did  she  and  Charles  ever  meet,  I  wonder? 
He  would  have  been  so  graciously  courte 
ous  to  the  little  lady;  but  I  fear  not;  they 
moved  in  quite  different  circles,  and  Charles 
never  went  to  Cranford.  Besides,  Miss 
Deborah  would  have  disapproved  of  him 
so  utterly  that  she  would  never  have  per 
mitted  Miss  Matty  to  associate  with  him. 
Of  course,  I  paid  my  respects  to  Miss 
Deborah  then  and  there,  but  I  was  careful 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


to  confine  myself  strictly  to  the  "rules  and 
regulations  for  visiting,"  and  only  over 
stepped  the  limit  of  time  when  Miss  Matty 
and  I  stood  on  the  doorstep  to  watch  Miss 
Betsy  Barker's  cow  "going  to  her  pasture 
clad  in  dark  grey  flannel."  I  have  recently 
met  a  real  first  cousin  four  times  removed 
from  Miss  Betsy,  and  she  is  almost  charm 
ing  enough  to  be  first  cousin  to  the  cow  her 
self,  though  there  is  nothing  whatever 
Cranfordian  in  her  character  or  disposi 
tion;  still,  it  is  a  link.  Dear  little  Miss 
Matty.  I  was  always  so  glad  that  Peter 
returned  to  his  faithful  little  sister  and 
Cranford  with  his  sense  of  humour  un 
impaired,  but  I  have  frequently  felt  a  bit 
uncertain  as  to  whether  Miss  Matty's 
sense  of  humour  might  not  have  failed  to 
appreciate  Peter's  writ,  and  fear  she  may 
have  been  inclined  to  agree  with  Mrs. 
Jamieson  that  the  shooting  of  cherubim 
was  a  bit  sacrilegious. 

With  a  sigh  I  left  these  very  dear  people, 
and  then   I   laughed,   for   I   found   I   had 
dropped  plump  into  the  lap  of  the  Auton 
116 


OLD  FRIENDS 


family  in  "Auton  House."  I  watched  the 
recently  arrived  C.  Auton  becoming  "suffi 
ciently  cohesive  to  bear  pinning";  I  sat 
sympathetically  on  the  stairs  with  T. 
Auton  as  he  curled  his  cold  toes  in  chilly 
anxiety  while  his  little  sister  went  at  his 
bidding  to  ask  his  mother  if  she  was  quite 
sure  that  he  would  "live  till  morning"; 
I  noted  their  economy  of  time  in  saying 
their  prayers  in  the  afternoon  "in  order  to 
save  time  when  they  went  to  bed";  and 
I  laughed  till  I  cried  over  the  little  mother 
who  "chewed  out  her  dolly's  wash  because 
she  had  been  forbidden  to  play  with  water." 
These  are  not  characters  in  a  book ;  they  arc 
just  you  and  I,  and  it  is  an  exact  account 
of  what  we  ourselves  did  at  one  time  or 
another  in  our  childhood. 

The  Auton  family  had  established  them 
selves  with  striking  incongruity  next  door 
to  Bishop  and  Mrs.  Proudie,  and  in  close 
propinquity  to  "the  Duke's  Children." 
Not  that  they  were  in  the  least  desirous  of 
moving  in  high  society,  but  because  liter 
ary  architecture  does  not  permit  one  to  ar- 

117 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


range  books  by  subjects  or  authors  unless 
one  has  far  more  room  at  one's  disposal 
than  we  have.  I  did  not  even  let  Mrs. 
Proudie  know  that  I  was  in  her  vicinity,  be 
cause  I  knew  that  she  would  not  hesitate  to 
reprove  me  for  wasting  my  time,  so  I  sur 
reptitiously  sneaked  by  the  Palace,  and  was 
greatly  pleased  to  be  warmly  greeted  by 
some  new  acquaintances  who  are  almost 
worthy  to  take  rank  among  my  very  real 
friends. 

Mr.  Archibald  Marshall  has  the  gift,  rare 
in  these  days,  of  admitting  his  readers  into 
the  real  intimacy  of  family  life,  and  it  is 
many  long  years  since  I  have  felt  so  much 
at  home  with  new  people  as  I  have  with  the 
Clinton  family.  The  Squire  is  one  of  the 
most  pig-headed  and  delightful,  most  un 
reasonable  and  lovable  of  people,  and  so 
unmitigatedly  masculine  that  even  in  his 
most  illogical  and  inconsistent  moods,  he 
needs  only  a  little  tactful  handling  to  re 
duce  him  to  the  amenability  of  a  lamb. 
When  his  eldest  son  married  an  American, 
his  wrath  knew  no  bounds,  but  her  national 
118 


OLD  FRIENDS 


ability  for  handling  men,  and  her  under 
standing  of  the  male  animal  soon  converted 
him  from  an  irate  father-in-law  to  an  ador 
ing  parent,  and  since  then  he  has  regarded 
Americans  leniently,  though  a  bit  nerv 
ously.  I  think  he  was  pleased,  though, 
when  I  told  him  that  I  thought  his  speech 
to  Mr.  Armitage  Brown,  who  objected  to 
letting  his  only  son  go  to  the  War,  should 
have  been  printed  in  pamphlet  form  and  dis 
tributed  throughout  the  allied  countries. 

Owing  to  the  aforesaid  lack  of  architec 
tural  conformity,  I  stepped  directly  from 
my  contemporaries  back  to  my  very  old 
friend  "Malcolm,"  "The  Marquis  of  Los- 
sie."  A  remote  connexion  of  mine  has  just 
become  engaged  to  marry  the  grandson  of 
his  progenitor,  so  of  course  I  had  to  pause 
on  my  journey  and  tell  him  the  news.  I  do 
not  say  very  much  about  him,  because  I 
fear  he  has  very  few  friends  left  who  care  to 
hear  about  him.  Besides,  time  was  passing, 
and  the  "stay  and  support"  would  shortly 
be  coming  home,  so  I  passed  hastily  on, 
only  stopping  for  a  moment  to  reprove 
119 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


"Mopsa  the  Fairy"  for  being  out  of  her 
place  and  to  send  her  back  to  the  nursery 
where  she  belonged,  not  far  from  Phonny 
and  Malleville.  She  bore  me  no  grudge  for 
my  reproof,  but  pointed  out  to  me  the  vol 
ume  of  Bernard  Shaw  on  the  shelf  below. 
I  wasted  no  time  over  that  gentleman;  he's 
no  friend  of  mine.  I  placed  him  in  a  con 
spicuous  position,  where  even  the  "joy  of 
my  life"  could  not  fail  to  see  him,  and 
awaited  his  return  with  the  pure  conscience 
of  one  who  has  accomplished  another  duty 
in  life. 


VII 

NEW  ACQUAINTANCES 


VII 
NEW  ACQUAINTANCES 

BUT,"  said  the  editorial  We  when  the 
foregoing  chapter  had  been  sub 
mitted  to  It,  "you  have  passed  by  a  num 
ber  of  old  friends  with  hardly  a  word; 
Trollope,  for  instance." 

"  I  would  n't  presume,"  I  replied  mod 
estly;  "nobody  felt  the  deaths  of  Lady 
Glencora  and  Mrs.  Proudie  more  than  I 
did,  but  their  praises  have  been  sung  by 
worthier  pens  than  mine." 

"Well,  how  about  modern  authors?" 
we  urged.  "You  must  have  made  a  few 
new  friends." 

Have  I  ?  I  wonder.  Perhaps ;  but  acquaint 
ances  and  real  intimacies  are  two  very 
different  matters,  whether  in  fact  or  fiction, 
and  one  likes  to  differentiate.  Besides,  in 
timacy  is  a  word  of  wide  and  uncertain 
scope,  and  I  hesitate  to  undertake  ambigu 
ous  responsibilities.  I  used  to  think  that 
intimacy  necessitated  a  certain  constant 
123 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


familiarity  with  another's  life  and  habits, 
but  my  convictions,  in  this  as  in  many 
other  matters,  have  been  shaken  of  late 
years.  Ever  since  a  charming  young  rela 
tive  urged  me  to  invite  her  "very  dearest 
friend  Bobby"  to  meet  her  at  dinner,  and 
was  unable  to  provide  me  with  his  surname 
because  she  had  met  him  only  the  previous 
day,  I  have  suspected  the  existence  of  cer 
tain  intimacies  that  are  unfounded  by 
either  length  of  time  or  exhaustive  inter 
course.  Any  lingering  doubts  I  may  have 
had  were  dispelled  by  a  friend  who  dropped 
in  to  tea  the  other  day.  He  alluded  to  a 
lady,  calling  her  by  her  Christian  name, 
which  surprised  me  into  saying,  "Why,  I 
did  not  know  you  knew  So-and-So." 

" Know  her ! "  he  replied;  "  I  have  known 
her  all  our  lives;  she  is  one  of  my  most  in 
timate  friends." 

"Her  death  must  have  been  a  great  sor 
row  to  you,"  I  remarked  sympathetically. 

"Her  what?"  he  exclaimed. 

"Why,  yes;  she  died  three  years  ago," 
I  informed  him;  "had  n't  you  heard  of  it?" 
124 


NEW  ACQUAINTANCES 


He  had  n't;  but  he  still  maintains  that 
she  was  one  of  his  most  intimate  friends. 

Now,  of  course,  I  do  not  wish  to  be  un 
reasonable,  and  I  would  not  demand  of 
fiction  more  than  is  required  in  fact,  but 
personally  I  find  it  difficult  to  feel  really  in 
timate  with  a  person  in  fact  when  I  do  not 
know  whether  he  is  dead  or  alive,  and  I  can 
not  make  real  friends  in  fiction  when  their 
authors  will  permit  me  to  associate  with 
their  offspring  only  in  the  telling  or  public 
incidents  of  their  careers.  Acquaintances 
in  plenty  are  to  be  had  for  the  asking; 
many  of  them  pleasant,  most  of  them  in 
significant,  and  a  regrettable  few  whom  one 
gently  cremates  upon  the  glowing  coals  of 
the  nearest  open  fire.  These  people  may  be 
quite  charming  and  attractive,  but  they 
come  and  go  like  guests  at  the  afternoon 
tea  which  I  ought  to  be  attending  at  this 
moment,  and,  like  them,  they  make  a  few 
vaguely  pleasant  remarks  and  vanish  out  of 
my  life.  I  have  met  their  like  at  dinners  and 
balls,  on  trans-Atlantic  steamers,  and  in 
motor  accidents;  I  see  them  in  exciting 

125 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


experiences,  and  frequently  under  such 
blandly  equivocal  circumstances  that  I 
should  certainly  decline  a  further  acquaint 
ance  with  them  even  had  I  the  opportunity 
to  pursue  it,  but  I  am  rarely  given  the  time. 
Some  of  these  people  might  conceivably 
become  friends  if  I  were  only  allowed  to 
know  them  well  enough  or  long  enough  to 
permit  the  ripening  of  acquaintance  into 
friendship;  but  one  cannot  become  really 
intimate  before  one  has  swallowed  one's 
soup  at  a  dinner-party,  or  swear  eternal 
friendship  when  disentangling  an  apparent 
corpse  from  amid  the  wreckage  of  an  aero 
plane,  and  such  are  the  only  opportunities 
given  us  by  most  of  the  modern  novelists. 
Hope  occasionally  arises  within  me,  as  it 
did  not  long  ago  when  I  met  that  delightful 
gentleman,  Mr.  John  Baltazar.  He  really 
took  me  into  his  confidence  by  telling  me  in 
detail  the  story  of  his  life,  and  though  he 
had  been  a  good  deal  of  an  ass,  he  admitted 
it  so  frankly  and  jovially  that  I  could  not 
but  be  drawn  to  him,  and  then,  no  sooner 
had  I  begun  to  feel  that  I  knew  him  really 
126 


NEW  ACQUAINTANCES 


well,  than  he  was  haled  away  to  China  and 
I  shall  never  see  him  again.  His  virile  breez- 
iness  makes  him  irresistible  as  a  friend,  but 
I  am  wondering  just  a  little  what  that 
slightly  colourless  Marcelle  will  make  of 
him  as  a  husband.  I  do  not  know  what  her 
life  with  him  will  be,  but  I  am  sure  that  it 
will  not  be  dull,  for  she  will  never  know 
what  he  is  going  to  do  next.  How  delightful 
it  would  have  been  if  he  could  only  have 
visited  Major  Meredyth  ("  with  a  y  ")  at  the 
time  when  Mr.  Quang  Ho  was  still  his  body 
servant;  it  would  have  been  interesting  to 
know  what  Sergeant  Marigold  would  have 
made  of  that  celestial  servitor.  I  am  in 
clined  to  think  that  their  conversations 
would  have  been  truly  interesting,  and  I 
am  not  sure  which  of  them  would  have 
been  the  more  edified.  I  long  for  Sergeant 
Marigold  as  a  personal  friend,  but  he  will 
not  permit  me  to  overstep  the  line  that 
marks  our  social  separation.  I  regret  this 
for  he  and  John  Baltazar  are  the  only  two 
unmitigated  men  among  their  author's  al 
ways  charming  family.  Marcus  Ordeyne  is 
127 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


an  amusing  gentleman,  but  no  real  man 
could  safely  have  defied  conventionality  as 
he  did ;  the  Fortunate  Youth  is  an  enchant 
ing  boy,  fortunate  to  a  degree  most  unusual 
in  this  cold,  hard  world,  but  he  is  the  Prince 
in  a  fairy  tale  rather  than  a  real  work-a-day 
man;  Simon  is  truly  something  more  than 
a  Jester,  and  one  could  not  but  have  respect 
for  anybody  who  could  find  humour  in 
Murglebed-on-Sea;  but  one  is  not  alto 
gether  manly  with  one  foot  in  the  grave, 
and  by  the  time  he  got  well  he  was  so  very 
much  married  that  I  felt  it  only  decent  to 
efface  myself;  but  Sergeant  Marigold  is  not 
only  every  whit  a  man,  but  he  is  as  stern  an 
aristocrat  as  is  his  next-door  neighbour  (in 
my  library)  the  Emperor  Francis  Joseph, 
with  whose  character  he  has  much  in  com 
mon.  Not  having  aspired  to  association 
with  Royalty  in  fact,  I  feel  free  to  adopt 
such  as  please  me  to  friendship  within  the 
pages  of  a  book,  and  I  am  a  staunch  ad 
mirer  of  that  monarch  who  was  himself  a 
greater  tragedy  than  any  he  caused.  I  do 
like  men  who  stick  to  their  convictions 

128 


NEW  ACQUAINTANCES 


through  thick  or  thin,  right  or  wrong,  and 
the  Emperor  is  no  more  immovable  in  his 
principles  than  is  his  humble  neighbour. 
The  Sergeant  seldom  voices  his  opinions, 
but  I  always  see  a  gleam  of  sympathetic  ap 
proval  in  his  eye  when,  after  I  have  been 
associating  with  people  at  Mr.  Galsworthy's 
"Country  House,"  or  been  forcibly  intro 
duced  to  any  of  Mr.  Oppenheim's  tribe,  he 
hears  me  request  an  audience  with  the 
Emperor  by  way  of  restoring  my  self- 
respect.  I  esteem  and  admire  the  Emperor 
immensely,  but  I  fear  he  is  quite  incapable 
of  appreciating  the  real  worth  and  charm 
of  his  other  neighbour,  the  dear  Cardinal 
of  Snuff-Box  fame.  I  always  wish  that  the 
Cardinal  could  have  been  appointed  the 
Emperor's  confessor,  because  I  believe  that, 
even  in  so  modest  a  position,  his  gentle 
sense  of  humour  and  his  human  outlook 
upon  life  would  have  mitigated  the  auster 
ity  of  that  aloof  monarch,  and  yet  not  have 
detracted  from  the  most  majestic  figure  in 
history. 

I  pass  by  Mr.  DeMorgan  and  Mr.  Hew- 
129 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


lett  with  a  cold  bow ;  one  of  them  bores  me 
and  the  other  has  been  the  cause  of  bitter 
family  strife,  so  neither  is  popular  with  me. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  Mr.  DeMorgan 
gives  one  ample  time  and  opportunity  to 
become  intimate  with  his  characters,  but 
I  cannot  feel  any  very  overwhelming  inter 
est  in  immoral  plumbers  or  inebrious  care 
takers,  and  though  Mr.  Hewlett  moves  in 
quite  different  circles,  his  morals  are  too 
sentimentally  questionable  for  me  to  feel 
at  home  with  him.  I  like  my  good  people 
good,  and  my  bad  people  bad,  and  never 
feeling  quite  sure  which  of  the  two  kinds  I 
am  meeting  in  my  rare  encounters  with  Mr. 
Hewlett,  I  skip  cautiously  by  him  to  greet 
two  dear  friends  about  whom  I  have  no 
horrid  doubts. 

I  am  really  devoted  to  Captain  (V.C.) 
and  Mrs.  Desmond,  the  more  so  that  I  did 
not  meet  them  under  wildly  exciting  cir 
cumstances,  nor  were  they  forcibly  torn 
from  my  companionship  at  the  end  of  six 
months  or  an  unfinished  year.  I  associated 
with  them  in  their  daily  lives  and  through 

130 


NEW  ACQUAINTANCES 


unhurried  though  not  trivial  incident,  and 
the  more  our  intimacy  grew,  the  more  I 
found  in  them  to  admire.  I  cherish  high 
standards  and  ideals  myself,  and  always 
try  to  follow  the  example  of  those  who  hold 
them,  whether  in  fact  or  fiction,  but  my 
favourite  niece  says  that  Honor  is  alto 
gether  too  good  to  live  with,  and  that  she 
much  prefers  to  live  with  me.  This  is,  of 
course,  flattering,  but  seems  to  point  to 
a  lack  of  success  in  my  endeavours.  The 
Desmonds  have  a  delightful  habit  of  ap 
pearing  among  their  author's  other  families, 
and  always  to  the  pleasure  and  advantage 
of  those  about  them.  They  brought  those 
two  hot-tempered  Lenoxes  together  after 
they  had  wasted  five  or  six  perfectly  good 
years  over  a  misunderstanding;  they  lent 
a  hand  in  helping  the  unfortunate  Lyndsay 
Videlle  to  face  a  life,  happily  not  too  long, 
with  her  half-breed  husband,  and  after 
meeting  and  hearing  of  them  among  vari 
ous  of  their  Anglo-Indian  friends,  we  find, 
as  we  would  expect  to  find,  their  daughter 
doing  fine  work  in  the  War.  They  are  dear 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


people,  and  I  wish  there  were  more  like 
them. 

Honor  Desmond  is  a  true  friend,  and  I 
often  wonder  what  effect  she  would  have 
upon  Mr.  Pryce's  people  if  she  ever  met 
them.  She  would  be  extremely  sorry  for 
them,  I  am  sure,  for  she  would  see  at  once 
that  most  of  them  would  be  perfectly  re 
spectable,  self-respecting  individuals  if  only 
their  author  did  not  insist  upon  forcibly 
dragging  them  from  the  paths  of  virtue. 
Ann  Forrester  was  as  little  inclined  to  mis 
behave  herself  as  was  the  Statue  that  lived 
in  her  Wood,  and  there  is  not  the  slightest 
reason  to  suppose  that  Jezebel's  mother 
would  have  gone  to  the  lengths  she  did  if 
Mr.  Pryce  had  not  deliberately  placed  her 
there.  This  is  not  fair  play  on  his  part,  and 
I  like  him  the  less  for  it,  even  though  Ann 
is  not  a  very  convincing  person  at  best ;  she 
is  not  as  real  as  her  friend,  Claudia,  and  in 
finitely  less  so  than  either  Jezebel  or  her 
father,  who  were  extremely  human.  She  is 
much  more  like  the  characters  drawn  by 
Mr.  Leonard  Mcrrick,  who  are  not  real  pco- 

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pie  at  all,  but  exceedingly  clever  portraits 
to  be  hung  on  the  walls  of  one's  imaginary 
house  of  fiction. 

Why  we  have  not  become  more  intimate 
with  the  Gay-Dombeys  I  do  not  know,  un 
less  it  is  that  their  discursive  author  keeps 
them  so  busy  associating  with  a  host  of 
half-real,  half-fictional  people,  that  they 
have  no  time  to  make  friends  with  their 
readers.  The  only  person  who  has  inti 
mated  that  she  would  like  me  for  a  friend  is 
that  superlatively  charming  woman,  Lady 
Feenix;  but  then,  she  is  not  really  Lady 
Feenix  at  all,  but  my  favourite  aunt  mas 
querading  under  that  name.  She  possesses 
the  secret  of  universal  popularity  which  lies 
in  making  each  person  she  meets  believe 
that  he  is  the  one  person  in  the  world  for 
whom  she  cares  and  whom  she  wants  to  see, 
and  though  one  knows  quite  well  that  the 
next  comer  will  fall  under  the  same  spell, 
and  purr  with  the  same  sense  of  gratifica 
tion,  one  is  quite  content  to  know  that  her 
invariable  charm  will  never  fail  one's  self. 

My  friends  are  by  no  means  confined  to 

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fashionable  London  society,  and  I  travel 
down  to  Devon  to  greet  with  warm  pleas 
ure  the  "Man  from  America,"  a  delightful 
person  in  himself,  but  for  whose  captivat 
ing  father-in-law  I  have  the  tenderest  affec 
tion.  Of  all  the  comparatively  new  friends 
I  have  made,  not  one  is  more  to  my  mind 
than  the  Vicomte  de  Nauroy,  whose  family 
name  was  Patrick  O'Reilly.  Nothing  short 
of  a  blend  of  the  two  nationalities  indicated 
could  have  produced  the  polished  courtliness 
and  the  childlike  simplicity  of  this  most 
charming  of  men;  no  one  else  under  the 
acquisition  of  unexpected  wealth  could 
have  continued  unsuspected  to  live  in  the 
modest  country  cottage,  and  no  one  but  the 
Vicomte  could  so  gracefully  and  unob 
trusively  have  fallen  asleep  in  one  of  Lon 
don's  slightly  questionable  music-halls.  His 
two  adored  granddaughters  married  and 
left  "Bon  Papa"  alone  with  his  roses  and 
old  Pelagic  (it  is  a  way  granddaughters 
have),  but  the  old  Vicomte  was  undaunted 
to  the  last.  He  "filled  himself  a  bumper  of 
the  Madere  sec,  and  drank  it,  standing  alone 

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NEW  ACQUAINTANCES 


at  the  table.  '  A  la  memoir e  de  majeunesse  ! ' 
said  old  Patrick  —  and  he  reversed  the 
glass." 

It  is  natural  to  turn  from  the  Vicomte  to 
that  peppery  but  grand  old  nobleman,  the 
Prince  Saracinesca.  He  is,  perhaps,  too  old 
a  friend  to  include  among  these  of  so  much 
more  recent  a  date,  but  both  he  and  Sant' 
Ilario  are  so  very  dear  to  me  that  I  cannot 
pass  them  by.  I  am  glad,  indeed,  that  the 
old  Prince  could  not  have  lived  to  see  the 
evil  days  that  have  fallen  upon  the  world, 
but  I  rejoice  in  the  pride  that  would  have 
been  his  had  he  known  of  the  achieve 
ments  of  his  country's  soldiers  in  the  Alps. 
With  such  as  he  and  the  Vicomte,  the  Clin 
tons  and  the  Desmonds,  I  can  form  real  in 
timacies;  various  others  I  accept  as  pleas 
ant  acquaintances;  but  for  the  most  part 
I  am  not  loath  to  withdraw  into  an  exclu 
sive  retirement  where  the  modern  fashion 
able  worldlings  do  not  care  to  follow  me  - 
nor  I  to  have  them. 


VIII 
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VIII 
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I  APPRECIATE  immensely  the  various 
and  varied  efforts  that  are  being  made 
by  my  Government  to  ameliorate  the  con 
ditions  of  life  in  this  country,  and  in  none 
of  the  many  problems  connected  with  this 
desirable  end  do  I  feel  a  greater  interest 
than  in  that  of  housing.  I  doubt  very  much 
if  even  the  Government  itself  is  half  as 
much  impressed  as  I  am  with  the  impor 
tance  of  this  problem,  or  that  they  would 
go  so  far  as  to  share  my  conviction  that  in 
the  proper  housing  of  the  population  lies 
one  of  the  fundamental  principles  in  the 
production  of  a  worthy  citizen.  My  views 
on  the  subject  are  strictly  feminine,  but, 
therefore,  I  venture  to  suggest,  not  wholly 
unworthy,  for  to  be  worth  the  building  of  it, 
a  house  should  imply  a  Home,  and  "What 
is  home  without  a  Mother?"  I  am  afraid 
that  if  it  were  left  to  the  tender  mercies  of 
the  gubernatorial  mind  it  would  be  nothing 
but  an  incubator. 

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PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


When  I  am  President  of  the  United 
States,  I  propose  to  enact  an  amendment  to 
the  Constitution  which  will  render  obliga 
tory  a  working  knowledge  of  their  duties  on 
the  part  of  heads  of  departments  and  chair 
men  of  commissions.  The  present  arrange 
ment  seems  to  be  an  admirable  illustration 
of  the  modern  theory  of  equality,  and  of  the 
conviction  on  the  part  of  the  general  public 
that  one  man  is  just  as  good  as  another. 
The  theory  is  grand,  but,  to  my  reaction 
ary  mind,  it  does  not  seem  invariably  to 
meet  with  truly  practical  success.  Special 
izing  can,  of  course,  be  overdone,  but  it  has 
occurred  to  me  several  times  that  if  I 
wanted  the  best  of  advice  on  wine,  for  in 
stance,  I  should  not  apply  to  a  cotton- 
broker,  nor  if  I  broke  my  leg  should  I  tele 
phone  hastily  to  the  greengrocer  to  come 
and  set  it  for  me.  This  may  sound  flippant, 
but  indeed  one  sees  actual  instances  that 
are  not  a  whit  the  less  absurd.  I  know  of 
one  municipal  commission  on  building, 
composed  of  three  members,  who  have 
charge  of  one  of  the  most  important  classes 
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of  building  in  their  city.  The  decision  as  to 
architecture,  style,  planning,  and  cost  rests 
entirely  in  their  hands,  and  they  have  mil 
lions  of  dollars  at  their  disposal.  The  several 
vocations  of  these  gentlemen  in  private  life 
are  respectively  politician,  wine-merchant, 
and  stock-broker,  and,  naturally,  the  poli 
tician  is  the  chairman.  One  has  nothing 
whatever  against  these  gentlemen  or  their 
professions  in  life,  but  somehow  or  other  it 
does  not  seem  to  me  the  most  intelligent 
choice  possible  for  the  position  they  are  re 
quired  to  fill  on  that  particular  commission, 
or  that  their  callings  would  have  tended  to 
fit  them  for  it.  To  a  simple-minded  person 
like  myself  it  would  seem  imperative  that 
one,  at  least,  of  that  commission  should 
have  been  an  architect  by  profession,  be 
cause  my  common  sense  tells  me  that  only 
a  mind  trained  in  that  calling  could  suc 
cessfully  cope  with  such  a  problem;  but  if 
I  expressed  that  opinion  publicly,  my  dem 
ocratic  convictions  would  be  questioned 
and  I  should  be  accused  of  not  believing  in 
the  Equality  of  Man.  I  don't.  But  that  need 
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PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


not  prevent  the  exercise  of  common  sense. 
I  believe  that  one  may  be  a  perfectly  good 
democrat  without  falling  a  victim  to  that 
delusion,  dear  to  democracies,  that  any 
citizen  is  equally  fitted  for  any  task,  from 
plumbing  and  architecture  to  the  Presi 
dency.  It  is  really  rather  a  discouraging 
view  for  a  nation  to  assume.  A  man  spends 
years  and  brains  and  energy  and  money  in 
perfecting  his  knowledge  of  a  certain  pro 
fession  or  calling,  and  then  the  working  of 
it  is  put  by  imperturbable  authorities  into 
the  hands  of  somebody  who  knows  about  it 
just  nothing  at  all.  The  intentions  of  these 
commissions  are  doubtless  super-excellent, 
but  one  has  heard  where  many  good  inten 
tions  lead,  and  can  only  benevolently  trust 
that  they  do  not  carry  their  perpetrators 
with  them;  but  it  would  relieve  one  of  a 
good  deal  of  anxiety  for  their  future  welfare 
if  both  the  intentions  and  their  perpetra 
tors  could  be  educated  and  trained  in  a 
more  practical  path. 

An  illustration  of  this  came  to  my  notice 
not  long  ago  in  the  proposal  to  enact  a  law 
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which  would  make  it  obligatory  that  all 
bedrooms  should  be  not  less  than  a  given 
size,  in  order  that  a  certain  number  of  cubic 
feet  of  air  should  be  ensured  to  those  sleep 
ing  in  them.  Now  the  intention  of  that  law 
is  splendid.  I  am  a  great  believer  in  fresh  air 
and  consider  it  one  of  the  great  factors  of 
good  health,  but  this  endeavour  to  secure  it 
seems  to  be  open  to  criticism.  In  the  first 
place,  I  am  wondering  just  how  they  pro 
pose  to  enforce  it.  It  would  be  the  easiest 
matter  in  the  world  to  make  illegal  the 
building  of  a  room  containing  less  than  a 
given  number  of  square  feet;  they  might, 
conceivably,  also  legislate  upon  the  num 
ber  of  people  who  were  to  sleep  in  it;  but 
when  one  comes  right  down  to  practicali 
ties,  just  how  do  they  propose  to  ascertain 
that  the  law  is  not  evaded?  I  may  dutifully 
build  my  bedroom  of  the  prescribed  size, 
but  how  is  my  Government  to  discover  how 
many  of  my  family  I  may  hospitably  invite 
to  share  it  with  me?  Is  the  police  force  to 
be  augmented,  and  every  policeman  fur 
nished  with  a  latch-key  to  every  house? 

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PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


Are  they  to  make  stealthy  and  unexpected 
midnight  visitations,  and,  entering  each 
bedroom  with  flashlight  in  hand,  count  the 
occupants  of  every  bed?  How  unattractive 
a  thought !  And  if  an  overplus  is  found,  will 
the  unfortunate  delinquents  be  then  and 
there  dragged  from  their  beds  and  haled  in 
shivering  shimmies  before  the  court?  It 
might  not  be  within  the  power  of  a  man  of 
very  moderate  means  and  large  family  to 
hire  the  number  of  cubic  feet  of  air  re 
quired  by  the  law  for  each  person,  and  in 
such  case  what  is  to  be  done  about  it?  My 
imagination  is  unequal  to  a  reply.  I  can 
only  suggest  that  fresh  air  is  not  produced 
by  square  feet,  and  meekly  enquire,  What 's 
the  matter  with  the  window? 

This  legislating  for  the  provision  of  fresh 
air  by  a  method  that  by  no  means  necessa 
rily  produces  it,  seems  to  my  unintelligence 
much  on  a  par  with  the  precautions  taken 
against  fire.  Here  again  there  appears  to 
the  puzzled  lay  mind  a  lack  of  consistency 
between  the  law  and  its  observance,  as  well 
as  something  of  inequality  in  its  enforce- 

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ment.  There  is  an  admirable  law  to  the 
effect  that  no  wooden  houses  or  buildings 
may  be  erected  within  certain  city  limits, 
and  this  ruling  is  so  particularized  that  a 
man  may  not  build  so  much  as  a  wooden 
hencoop  in  his  own  back  yard.  It  does  not 
seem  likely,  especially  in  a  crowded  tene 
ment  district,  that  he  would  find  hens 
either  a  safe  or  a  profitable  investment,  but 
at  all  events  the  Government  decides  that  it 
is  a  case  of  fowls  versus  fire,  and,  very  prop 
erly,  rules  in  favour  of  safety  first.  When  it 
comes  to  religious  privileges,  however,  the 
case  is  different.  Many  of  these  tenements 
are  in  over-populated  Jewish  districts,  and 
there  are  certain  Jewish  feasts  which  re 
quire  that  the  worshippers  shall  sleep  on 
the  housetops.  I  do  not  know  the  season, 
but  I  trust  that  it  occurs  in  the  summer. 
The  houses  in  this  country,  not  being  built 
on  the  plans  provided  at  the  time  this  cere 
mony  was  instituted,  the  Jews  are  obliged 
to  get  permits  for  the  temporary  erection  of 
wooden  shacks,  which  are  built  on  the  roofs 
of  houses  of  varying  heights,  where  they 

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PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


may  carry  out  their  religious  ceremonies. 
They  are  thus  put  to  some  trouble  and  ex 
pense,  and  I  have  a  sneaking  sympathy 
with  the  loss  of  memory  which  causes  them 
to  forget  to  pull  these  structures  down  until 
the  time  of  the  yearly  feast  recurs,  when 
they  receive  (and  doubtless  pay  for)  a  fresh 
permit.  Meantime  throughout  the  year, 
these  wooden  shacks,  far  greater  in  size  and 
danger  than  any  number  of  hencoops,  re 
main  in  place;  most  admirable  fuel  for 
fires  of  portentous  dimensions.  Yet  when  a 
private  school  in  the  same  city  was  built  of 
fireproof  construction  a  few  years  ago, 
which  had  an  open  play-garden  on  the  roof, 
permission  to  build  a  wooden  railing  around 
it,  in  order  to  safeguard  the  children  from 
falling  off,  was  refused  because  of  the  fire 
hazard.  Far  be  it  from  me  to  cavil  at  any 
precautions  taken  against  fire,  but  there 
seems  to  me  in  the  above  rulings  an  incon 
sistency  as  glorious  as  that  usually  attrib 
uted  to  the  female  sex. 

My  Government  loves  dearly  to  legis 
late.  I  suppose  I  should  like  to  do  it  myself 
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if  I  had  the  chance,  but  their  paternal  atti 
tude  frequently  reminds  me  of  that  of  cer 
tain  young  parents,  who  lay  down  strict 
laws  of  discipline  for  their  offspring,  and 
then  scatter  them  —  the  laws,  and  fre 
quently  the  offspring  —  to  the  four  winds 
of  heaven  when  they  interfere  with  their 
own  personal  predilections.  The  Govern 
ment  is  most  properly  desirous  that  the 
people  should  be  safely  and  comfortably 
housed,  but  when  it  comes  to  providing  the 
houses,  their  attitude  is  distinctly  sugges 
tive  of  "After  you,  my  dear  Alphonse,"  and 
provocative  bows  and  smirks  are  directed 
toward  the  private  individual.  Now  this  is 
truly  unmoral.  An  individual  seldom  can, 
and  a  corporation  never  would,  tackle  any 
large  housing  proposition  as  other  than  a 
strictly  business  undertaking.  It  could 
hardly  be  expected  of  the  one,  and  it  would 
not  be  justice  on  the  part  of  the  other 
toward  its  shareholders.  Besides,  that  pa 
ternal  Government  of  ours  permits  a  jolly 
little  game  to  be  played  by  landowners 
and  real-estate  dealers  which  would  make 

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PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


such  an  attempt  practically  impossible.  If 
a  man  buys  a  piece  of  land  and  builds  a 
nice  little  house  on  it,  the  owner  of  the  ad 
joining  property  immediately  feels  that  it 
is  a  privilege  for  anybody  to  look  at  so 
charming  and  attractive  a  residence,  and 
promptly  raises  the  price  of  his  land;  if  he 
has  a  house  on  it,  he  raises  the  rent  on 
account  of  the  improvement  in  the  view. 
He  may  even  put  up  a  new  house  for  which 
he  can  charge  a  higher  rent,  and  with  two 
beautiful  new  houses  to  look  at,  of  course 
the  price  of  a  third  lot  goes  up  higher,  and 
a  fourth  higher  still,  so  that  by  the  time  one 
has  a  pleasant  little  group  of  a  dozen  or  so 
houses,  the  working-man  might  just  about 
as  well  contemplate  renting  a  palace  on 
Fifth  Avenue  as  being  able  to  afford  to 
hire  a  simple  home  in  a  suburb.  Really  this 
is  a  bit  discouraging.  The  little  game  cannot 
be  played  on  the  Government  because  the 
Government  can  take  the  land,  if  necessary 
by  right  of  eminent  domain,  and  hold  it  at 
its  own  price,  so  that  the  working-man 
would  be  able  to  secure  a  decent  and  proper 

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home  at  a  decent  and  proper  price.  This 
game  has  been  solemnly  termed  "The  Un 
earned  Increment."  It  is  but  just  to  give 
it  an  imposing  title  because,  of  a  truth,  it  is 
a  most  illustrious  evil,  and  one  which,  I  re 
gret  to  say,  is  not  confined  to  the  United 
States  alone.  I  was  motoring  abroad  a  few 
summers  ago,  and  fate  and  a  thunderstorm 
compelled  us  to  spend  the  night  in  the  one 
hotel  of  a  small  but  busy  little  town.  I  never 
met  with  a  more  forlorn  apology  for  an  inn. 
The  doors  would  not  shut;  the  locks  re 
fused  to  lock;  the  papers  had  peeled  from 
the  walls  in  festoons,  and  one  was  obliged 
to  walk  with  circumspection  lest  the  rotten 
floors  should  give  way  beneath  one's  feet. 
The  landlord  was  a  friendly  soul,  even  if 
depressed,  and  after  the  very  worst  break 
fast  that  I  ever  ate,  we  fell  into  conversa 
tion.  He  told  me  that  he  could  not  make  a 
living  out  of  his  hotel,  and  that  he  would 
be  obliged  to  give  it  up.  I  asked  if  the  little 
town  were  dead  and  "nothing  doing"  to 
bring  him  business,  and  he  replied  that,  on 
the  contrary,  it  was  quite  a  centre  for 

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"commercial  gents,"  and  that  if  he  could 
only  give  them  decent  accommodation  his 
house  would  pay  well.  Being  unlearned  in 
increments  at  that  time,  I  enquired  why  he 
did  not  borrow  the  money  and  make  re 
pairs.  He  smiled  a  sickly  smile  and  ex 
plained.  Every  freshly  papered  wall,  every 
mended  floor  and  lock,  and,  it  seemed  to 
me,  every  new  pin  in  a  fresh  pincushion 
promptly  produced  an  added  tax  for  bet 
terments,  and  if  he  improved  his  grounds  it 
would  jump  his  neighbour's  taxes  as  well. 
He  simply  could  not  consider  the  possibility 
of  repairs  enough  to  make  his  livelihood. 
It  is  a  grand  game,  that,  and  only  a  public 
authority  pricked  and  goaded  by  public 
opinion  is  ever  in  this  wicked  world  going 
to  put  a  stop  to  it. 

It  is  characteristic  of  us  as  a  people  that 
when  an  emergency  comes  we  usually  rise 
to  it  and  do  the  decent  thing,  and  this  was 
illustrated  by  the  housing  responsibilities 
assumed  by  the  Government  in  various 
parts  of  the  country  in  war  time  and  for 
war-work,  but  I  sadly  fear  that  we  are  not 

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very  far-sighted  as  a  nation.  Directly  the 
armistice  was  signed  the  Government  in 
continently  dropped  its  responsibilities  and 
cancelled  most  of  its  contracts  for  such 
work,  even  in  some  cases  where  the  build 
ings  were  well  under  way.  This  is  not,  ex 
actly,  an  argument  to  use  in  urging  that 
the  Government  should  assume  this  re 
sponsibility,  but  if  that  body  once  under 
took  the  obligation,  one  might  feel  encour 
aged  to  hope  that  it  would  give  its  mind  to 
the  business.  In  all  probability  it  might  at 
least  not  be  guilty  of  a  favourite  enterprise 
of  some  individuals,  which  is  to  buy  land  in 
the  suburbs,  and  then  proceed  to  erect 
thereon  cheap  and  showy  tenement  houses 
known  as  "three-deckers,"  built  of  wood 
and  containing  one  family  on  each  floor. 
The  owner  builds  them,  according  to  law, 
at  precisely  the  right  distance  apart  to  cre 
ate  a  superb  draught,  so  that  any  one  of 
them  catching  on  fire  they  all  burn  like 
tinder  —  in  which  case  their  owner  collects 
a  most  remunerative  insurance.  It  is  only 
fair  to  note  that  in  many  places  this  form 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


of  construction  is  forbidden,  but  in  many 
others  the  practice  flourishes  merrily,  not 
ably  in  one  large  Eastern  city,  where  age 
and  intellectuality  would  lead  one  to  look 
for  better  things.  I  once  thought  that  the 
French  law  of  fining  a  person  who  allowed 
himself  to  be  run  over  by  a  passing  vehicle 
was  most  unjust,  but  a  more  thoughtful 
consideration  shows  it  to  be  an  admirable 
example  of  the  superiority  of  positive  over 
prohibitive  legislation.  If  the  fire  regula 
tions  ruled  that  in  event  of  such  tenements 
burning  down,  not  only  could  the  landlord 
collect  no  insurance,  but,  on  the  contrary, 
would  be  heavily  fined,  those  tenements 
would  be  of  such  superlatively  fireproof 
construction  that  you  could  n't  so  much  as 
start  a  fire  in  the  kitchen  stove. 

The  housing  of  workers  for  the  great 
manufacturing  plants  is  a  problem  beset 
with  difficulties  the  solution  of  which  is  not 
yet  found.  I  am  not  qualified  to  go  exhaus 
tively  into  the  pros  and  cons  of  the  many 
methods  of  studying  it,  with  which  any  one 
at  all  interested  in  the  subject  is  far  more 

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familiar  than  I,  but  there  is  one  attempt  at 
solution  on  the  part  of  the  Government 
which  I  am  sure  is  mistaken,  and  that  is 
where  they  insist  that  shacks  or  temporary 
buildings  are  fitting  and  proper  for  the 
housing  of  labourers.  (I  believe  I  have  re 
marked  before  that  the  gubernatorial  mind 
finds  it  difficult  to  soar  above  incubators.) 
A  married  man  never  in  this  world  is  going 
to  be  happy  for  any  length  of  time  in  a 
temporary  makeshift,  and  I  have  never 
noticed  an  indifference  to  creature  com 
forts  even  in  bachelors.  How  can  any  man 
be  expected  to  settle  down  and  stick  to  his 
work  when  the  whole  atmosphere  about 
him  is  redolent  of  transientness?  Even  from 
the  purely  practical  standpoint  of  efficient 
work,  the  scheme  is  poor  policy,  and  it 
ignores  wholly  and  outright  that  funda 
mental  element,  necessary  to  the  produc 
tion  of  a  good  workman,  or  a  good  citizen, 
or  a  good  anything  else  —  a  home.  It  may 
be  that  a  home  is  poor,  indifferent,  or  even 
bad;  all  the  same  it  is  a  home;  and  as  the 
good  ladies  of  the  Victorian  era  were  wont 

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to  declare  that  it  was  better  to  be  married, 
even  though  unhappily,  than  to  be  old 
maids,  so  I  stoutly  maintain  that  it  counts 
for  good  in  a  man's  life  to  have,  or  to  have 
had,  a  home  even  though  not  an  ideal  one. 
In  passing  through  one  of  the  tenement  dis 
tricts  not  long  ago  I  met  a  woman  rather 
the  worse  for  drink,  who  had  with  her  a 
small  boy  of  five  or  six  years  old.  She  was 
shaking  and  slapping  and  very  distinctly 
ill-using  him,  and  the  child  was  howling 
lustily  as  the  tears  ran  down  his  grimy  little 
cheeks;  yet  with  both  his  dirty  little  hands 
he  clung  desperately  to  the  perpetrator  of 
his  woes,  oblivious  of  the  whacks  in  the  far 
deeper  instinct  that  she  was  also  his  only 
source  of  refuge  and  help.  The  blows  and 
the  shakings  and  the  slaps  were  an  incident, 
and  would  pass,  and  his  instinct  drove  him 
below  the  incidentals  of  life  to  that  reality 
which  he  recognized  as  fundamental.  I  may 
be  a  bit  paradoxical ;  it  is  one  of  a  woman's 
prerogatives  (and  charms),  but  as  I  pon 
dered  over  the  trivial  incident,  it  seemed  to 
point  out  the  undeniable  strength  of  a  man 's 

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instinct  for  possession  and  being  possessed ; 
an  instinct  so  strong  that  a  child  was  oblivi 
ous  of  a  lower  evil  in  his  appeal  to  that 
which  was  the  higher  good. 

In  reading  the  biography  of  a  certain 
gentleman  of  note  I  was  impressed  by  his 
attitude  of  mind  toward  a  life  from  which, 
though  unusually  full  of  opportunity,  he 
yet  felt  himself  unable  to  gain  that  experi 
ence  which  would  solve  for  him  its  myster 
ies  and  problems.  He  was  so  busy  trying  to 
fit  life  into  a  system  of  self-education,  that 
he  missed  life  itself,  and  it  remained  for 
him  an  eternal  scaffolding  which  in  no  way 
helped  him  toward  the  erection  of  the  fin 
ished  building.  I  wondered  as  I  read  if  this 
might  not  be  part  of  the  trouble  with  our 
Government;  it  is  so  busy  running  up  elab 
orate  scaffoldings  of  laws  and  regulations, 
prohibitions  and  embargoes,  that  the  real 
and  solid  foundations  cannot  be  found  for 
the  intricacy  of  the  laws.  I  am  dreadfully 
tired,  anyway,  of  this  prohibitive  form  of 
government;  it  is  so  hopelessly  Mosaic  in 
its  methods.  For  thousands  of  years  we 

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have  been  laying  down  laws  to  the  effect 
that  you  shall  not  do  this  evil,  or  one  must 
not  commit  that  crime,  but  it  does  not 
seem  to  me  that  the  results  have  been 
highly  satisfactory.  If  legislation  is  neces 
sary  (which  I  suppose  it  is),  and  were  it 
my  business  to  legislate  (which  I  know 
it  is  n't),  I  should  be  greatly  tempted  to 
enact  a  new  code  by  which  personal  up 
rightness  should  be  required,  and  in  which 
every  law  should  begin  'Thou  shalt" 
instead  of  "Thou  shalt  not."  I  should  have 
a  special  set  framed  for  women  to  the  effect 
that  "Thou  shalt"  teach  thy  son  to  be 
true;  "Thou  shalt"  keep  thy  daughter 
pure;  "Thou  shalt"  see  to  it  that  thy  hus 
band  is  honest:  I  "allow  as  how"  we  should 
be  kept  pretty  busy,  but  we  might  get 
somewhere  in  the  end.  It  would  simplify 
life  a  lot  if,  instead  of  a  multiplicity  of 
building  laws  forbidding  this  and  that  and 
the  other  thing,  there  should  be  one  direct 
command,  "Thou  shalt  provide  the  work 
ing-man  with  a  home  and  thou  shalt  see  to 
it  that  it  does  not  burn  down."  How  simple. 

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And  what  burden  of  petty  responsibilities 
would  be  lifted  from  the  none-too-broad 
shoulders  of  the  Government. 

We  incline  as  a  people  to  a  somewhat 
homoeopathic  treatment  of  life,  I  fear,  and 
are  apt  to  deal  with  symptoms  rather  than 
to  search  for  the  real  cause  of  a  difficulty. 
To  provide  a  house  for  a  working-man  is 
meritorious  as  far  as  it  goes,  but  it  does  not 
go  deep  enough.  It  leaves  out  of  account 
altogether  that  inherent  demand  of  man 
kind,  unconscious  for  the  most  part  but 
none  the  less  insistent,  for  something  better 
and  beyond  bricks  and  bread.  This  is  the 
underlying  cause  of  much  of  the  socialism 
and  anarchism  of  to-day,  only  they  don't 
know  it.  They  shriek  for  money  and  riches 
because  money  and  riches  are  the  only  good 
things  that  they  know  anything  about,  and 
when  they  have  obtained  them,  they  con 
tinue  to  shriek,  speechlessly  and  without 
purpose,  because  they  do  not  know  what  it 
is  that  they  are  shrieking  for. 

We  Americans  are  tremendously  proud 
of  our  scientific  advancement.  We  have  the 

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very  latest  thing  in  theories  and  accom 
plishments,  and  we  cackle  like  a  whole 
barnyardful  of  hens  over  the  perfection  of 
our  ordinances  and  institutions,  but  there 
are  moments  when  I  have  a  horrid  sus 
picion  that  in  some  things  we  are  scan 
dalously  behind  the  times.  We  persist  in 
sticking  assiduously  to  the  obsolete  theory 
that  man  is  a  simple  animal,  composed 
solely  of  flesh  and  blood,  and  think  we  have 
solved  every  problem  connected  with  ex 
istence  if  we  provide  for  that  portion  of 
him;  whereas,  in  reality,  he  is  made  up 
of  some  ten  million  ingredients,  including 
spirit,  which  is  every  bit  as  insistent  and 
demanding  as  body,  only  we  are  too  stupid 
to  see  and  provide  for  it. 

An  excellent  illustration  of  this  is  to  be 
found  in  a  comparison  between  the  big 
hospitals  of  America  and  England.  Our 
great  American  hospitals  are  the  very 
acme  of  plu-perfection;  there  is  no  doubt 
about  that.  They  are  hygienically  and 
painfully  clean;  there  is  n't  a  fly  or  a 
flaw  (or  a  flower)  to  be  found  within 

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their  perfect  portals;  and  they  are  just 
about  as  human  as  a  talking-machine. 
The  very  latest  discoveries  of  science  and 
skill  are  given  to  their  occupants,  who 
are  well  fed  and  well  cared  for,  and  there 
is  n't  a  man,  woman,  or  child  among  them 
who  would  not  have  preferred  incarcera 
tion  in  the  penitentiary  or  county  gaol,  to 
their  apparently  fortunate  position.  The 
patients  growl  and  grumble;  there  is  fre 
quently  heard  abuse  of  the  food  and  treat 
ment;  they  are  often  suspicious,  unhappy, 
and  discontented,  and,  above  all,  they  are 
invariably  and  desperately  homesick.  Now 
just  make  a  mental  note  of  that  last  truth 
ful  statement,  please.  Discard  if  you  wish 
all  the  other  allegations,  and  take  that  one 
alone.  Picture  the  homes  from  which  most 
of  them  come --you  need  no  description 
of  them  —  and  contrast  their  present  sur 
roundings.  For  a  brief  period  they  have 
everything  in  this  world  that  flesh  and 
blood  can  need,  and  for  which,  when  in 
health  and  strength,  they  shriek  and  clam 
our,  and  yet,  they  are  confessedly  and  un- 

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mistakably  homesick.   In  Heaven's  name, 
what  are  they  homesick  for? 

I  have  visited  several  of  the  big  Eng 
lish  hospitals,  chiefly  in  London,  where 
hygienic  cleanliness  is  a  physical  impossi 
bility  -  -  unless  possibly,  by  superhuman 
efforts,  in  the  operating-room.  There  are 
a  few  flies,  literal  as  well  as  metaphorical; 
there  are  some  flaws  (and  heaps  of  flowers) 
in  most;  and  about  every  single  one  of 
them  is  an  atmosphere  of  human-ness  and 
home-li-ness,  to  find  which  you  might 
scratch  in  vain  every  hospital  in  the  United 
States  with  a  fine-tooth  comb.  I  doubt  if 
the  patients  are  as  well  fed  as  ours;  I 
know  they  are  not  so  luxuriously  cared  for; 
the  treatment  given  is  much  more  con 
servative  and  less  theoretically  scientific; 
yet  —  and  mind  you,  this  statement  is  not 
made  upon  my  own  authority,  but  upon 
that  of  a  person  whose  business  it  is  to 
know  such  things  —  the  results  turned  out 
from  the  English  hospitals  are,  taken 
by  and  large,  rather  more  successful  and 
satisfactory  than  are  ours.  How  do  you 

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account  for  it?  I  should  like  to  see  the  face 
of  any  American  physician  or  surgeon  who 
may  read  the  above ;  it  would  be  a  study  of 
incredulous  contempt,  and  his  opinion  of 
my  intellect  would  be  unprintable.  I  know, 
for  I  have  heard  it  frankly  expressed  by 
fraternal  doctor  friends;  nevertheless  I  am 
perfectly  willing  to  abide  by  my  statement. 
I  crossed  the  ocean  once  with  a  leading 
American  surgeon  who  had  visited  some  of 
these  London  hospitals,  including  one  for 
treatment  in  his  own  special  line  of  work. 
It  was,  perhaps,  even  a  bit  more  grimy  than 
some  others,  but,  by  actual  comparison, 
its  results  were  slightly  in  advance  of 
those  of  his  own  pet  and  very  perfect  hos 
pital  at  home;  but  this  conveyed  nothing 
to  him.  His  contempt  for  English  hospitals, 
including  this  particular  one,  remained  un 
mitigated,  and  when  one  murmured  to  him 
of  puddings  and  proofs,  he  could  think  no 
differently.  In  spite  of  undeniable  proof  to 
the  contrary,  beneath  his  American  nose, 
he  would  admit  nothing,  but  continued 
unmoved  in  his  patriotic  conviction  that 
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English  hospitals  were  hopelessly  behind 
the  times.  After  an  absence  from  home  of 
six  months  I  seemed  to  feel  a  familiar  at 
mosphere  steal  about  me  as  he  talked. 
I  wonder  why. 

It  is  perfectly  well  known  that  in  caring 
for  the  wounded  during  the  War,  the  ele 
ment  of  homesickness  was  so  inimical  to 
recovery  that  special  arrangements  were 
made  by  English  hospitals,  even  so  far 
away  as  France,  to  bring  some  member  of 
a  man's  family  to  be  near  and  visit  him, 
and  the  importance  of  the  experiment  was 
proved  beyond  question  by  its  success. 
Account  for  this  if  you  can  by  any  theory 
other  than  that  there  is  a  need  in  man  for 
something  beside  a  roof  over  his  head  and 
a  "genteel  sufficiency"  in  his  stomach.  A 
few  students  of  life  are  beginning  to  realize 
this,  but  the  material  weighs  heavily  in  the 
balance  against  the  immaterial,  and  it  is 
truly  difficult  to  deal  with  the  immaterial. 
We  are  scandalously  rich  in  this  country 
and,  fortunately  or  unfortunately,  our  use 
of  riches  is  not  a  matter  that  can  be  legis- 
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lated  upon  with  any  great  success.  We  can 
be,  and  Heaven  knows  we  are,  taxed  till 
(in  my  own  personal  case,  anyway)  the  tax 
is  bigger  than  the  income,  but  that  does 
not  show  us  how  to  spend  our  money  in  a 
way  that  is  of  benefit  to  others,  or  to  get 
the  best  fun  out  of  it  for  ourselves.  Yes,  I 
know;  we  are  tremendously  generous  and 
we  do  heaps  of  good  with  our  gains,  be  they 
wrell  or  ill  gotten,  and  this  applies  to  the 
Government  as  well  as  to  the  private  in 
dividual.  The  expenditure  of  the  individual 
is  none  of  my  business,  but  the  handling  of 
money  by  the  Government  is,  because  some 
of  it  is  mine,  and  I  strenuously  object  to 
many  of  the  ways  in  which  it  is  spent  by 
that  body.  I  do  not  care  one  bit,  for  in 
stance,  to  help  pay  for  a  $70,000  post-office 
to  serve  a  town  of  five  thousand  inhab 
itants;  but  could  I  be  assured  that  my 
money  would  be  used  intelligently  for  the 
proper  housing  of  the  people,  the  action  of 
the  Government  would  meet  with  my  un 
qualified  approval.  After  all,  the  question 
of  money  boils  itself  down  to  the  well-worn 

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maxim  of  its  use  as  a  means  to  an  end,  and 
there  could  not  be  found  a  more  solid  or 
fundamental  "end"  than  the  provision  of 
proper  living  conditions,  which  means  the 
school,  the  playground  and  its  sports,  and, 
above  all,  the  Home. 

England  has  been  studying  this  subject 
for  the  past  twenty  years  or  more,  and  has 
been  awake  to  this  side  of  the  problem  for 
a  very  long  time.  It  is  natural  that  she 
should  be  the  first  to  recognize  it  for,  pro 
verbially,  the  Englishman's  house  has  al 
ways  been  his  castle,  and  he  has  taken 
deeper  root  and  been  more  attached  to  his 
home,  be  it  cottage  or  palace,  than  we  of  a 
more  transient-loving  race.  In  several  cases 
their  efforts  have  achieved  fairly  satisfac 
tory  solutions,  and  their  attitude  toward 
partial  success  is  as  characteristic  of  that 
nation  and  of  France,  as  is  that  of  our  own. 
In  spite  of  occasional  success  England  and 
France  still  feel  that  the  problem  is  further 
from  its  final  solution  than  was  ever  Lei 
cester  Square  from  Tipperary,  and  though 
cheered  by  a  modicum  of  advance,  they  do 
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not  complacently  sit  down  and  purr,  but 
promptly  proceed  to  send  commissions  to 
other  countries  that  they  may  learn  and 
profit  by  the  experience  of  others.  I  feel  a 
certain  delicacy  about  mentioning  it,  as  I 
may  be  uninformed,  but  I  have  not  heard 
of  any  similar  voyages  of  discovery  having 
been  set  on  foot  by  Americans.  This  seems 
rather  a  pity  because,  even  though  we  may 
be  convinced  that  other  nations  have 
nothing  to  teach  us,  we  might  at  least 
learn  from  them  what  we  wish  to  avoid. 
Incidentally,  we  might  also  find  out  what 
we  really  want,  for  at  present  there  seems 
to  be  a  diversity  of  opinion  about  the  mat 
ter,  and  right  there  is  where  we  slip  up,  for 
it  is  only  a  strong-minded,  robust  Public 
Opinion  that  will  make  Public  Authority 
sit  up  and  take  notice. 

It  is  pretty  generally  admitted  that 
houses  cannot  be  built  without  proper 
foundations,  and  I  have  a  deeply  rooted 
conviction  that  the  only  safe  foundation 
for  a  democracy  lies  in  the  provision  of 
Homes.  If  Public  Opinion  could  be  edu- 

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cated  to  know  what  laws  were  wise  and 
necessary,  and  to  demand  intelligent  un 
derstanding  and  consistent  administration 
of  them  on  the  part  of  legislators,  perhaps 
the  children  on  a  school-house  roof  might 
be  safeguarded  from  falling  off,  and  the 
houses  in  a  Jewish  district  be  designed  to 
meet  the  needs  of  the  race  without  ar 
bitrary  ruling  on  the  one  hand  and  criminal 
fire  hazard  on  the  other.  Laws  are  regret 
tably  necessary  in  an  imperfect  world  and 
dwellings  a  desideratum,  but  how  pleasant 
it  would  be  if,  instead  of  prohibitive  rulings 
about  houses,  we  might  have  intelligent 
inspection  of  Homes.  I  would  draw  atten 
tion,  however,  to  the  qualifying  adjective. 


IX 

QUALITY  VERSUS  EQUALITY 


IX 

QUALITY  VERSUS  EQUALITY 

IT  will  not  have  escaped  the  notice  of  the 
keen  and  observant  mind  that  the  last 
year  or  two  has  been  marked  by  what 
might  be  called  an  epidemic  of  processions 
and  parades.  They  have  been  of  all  sorts 
and  descriptions.  Processions  of  business 
men  in  uninteresting  tail  coats  or  the 
greenish-yellow  suit  so  beloved  of  down 
town  men ;  thousands  of  petticoats  flapping 
to  a  stride  that  would  be  martial  did  not 
the  high  heel  cause  it  to  resemble  the  action 
of  a  hen  out  on  business;  floats  of  artistic 
ambitions  and  a  little  shaky  as  to  historical 
accuracy;  and,  best  of  all,  many  real  pro 
cessions  of  real  soldiers  bent  on  real  busi 
ness  in  a  real  cause.  It  is  an  excellent  method 
of  arousing  the  enthusiasm  of  the  people. 
The  sight  of  the  flag  invariably  meets  with 
applause,  and  the  many  bands  are  inspiring 
even  when  the  onward  feet  of  the  Christian 
soldiers  become  entangled  with  the  girls 

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they  left  behind  them,  and  Dixie  and  John 
Brown  get  inextricably  mixed.  A  proces 
sion  never  fails  to  draw  almost  as  vast  a 
crowd  as  a  baseball  game,  and  the  mere 
sight  alone  of  such  numbers  is  thrilling. 

I  live  on  a  perfectly  good,  level  street 
with  many  convenient  cross-streets  divid 
ing  it,  an  ideal  place  for  the  formation  and 
route  of  a  procession  and,  once  upon  a 
time,  one  could  take  it  comfortably  for 
granted  that  every  big  procession  would 
sooner  or  later  pass  my  house.  This  was 
extremely  pleasant.  My  house  was  filled 
from  attic  to  cellar  with  friends  and  rela 
tives,  young  and  old,  including  babies  of 
all  ages  from  the  cradle  upwards,  who  were 
being  taught  patriotism  from  their  extreme 
youth  while  that  of  the  old  folks  was  re 
newed.  The  street  is  broad,  and  therefore 
capable  of  holding  without  undue  crowding 
a  vast  concourse  of  people;  the  steps  to  the 
surrounding  houses  are  all  that  could  be 
desired  for  the  accommodation  of  tired 
mothers,  babies  and  children,  and  are 
never  grudged  for  that  purpose,  and  it  is  in 
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all  ways  the  street  par  excellence  through 
which  a  procession  should  pass;  but  for 
some  years  now  it  has  languished  un 
touched  by  the  feet  of  multitudes  and  un- 
aroused  by  martial  strains.  Why?  I  am  told 
that  all  parades  and  processions  must  now 
pass  through  the  business  part  of  the  city, 
through  the  slums,  and  past  the  homes  of 
the  foreign  population  in  order  that  any 
joy  or  benefit  that  may  be  derived  from 
them  may  accrue  to  the  "People."  Ad 
mirable  and  excellent  sentiment!  I  agree 
with  every  word  of  it.  But  why  are  not  my 
friends  and  I  also  the  "People"  ?  Why  do 
not  I  need  the  beneficial  effects  of  the  good 
things  that  —  not  the  gods  —  but  the 
country  provides?  Why  should  not  my 
feelings  be  considered  equally  with  the 
people  who  are  in  the  shops  or  live  in  the 
slums?  For  many  years  I  have  felt  that  in 
this,  as  in  many  other  ways,  my  rights  as 
an  American  citizen  are  being  trampled 
upon,  and  I  propose  to  protest. 

As   I   reflect  upon   the   pains  taken   to 
smooth  the  path  and  make  plain  the  way 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


for  what  is  erroneously  termed  the  "work 
ing"  class  over  what  with  equal  fallacy  is 
branded  the  "leisure"  class,  I  am  filled 
with  a  sense  of  injustice,  and  I  boldly  state 
that  in  my  opinion  my  country  is  going 
back  on  some  of  its  principles.  My  ances 
tors  came  to  this  country  because  George 
Washington  promised  that  they  should  be 
free,  equal,  and  unoppressed,  and  I  claim 
that  my  country  has  made  it  impossible 
for  me  to  be  in  any  one  of  those  three  de 
sirable  positions.  To  begin  with,  no  country 
in  the  world  declares  so  loudly  as  does  ours 
that  there  is  no  such  distinction  as  that  of 
class.  It  is  a  lie,  of  course.  There  has  been 
class  distinction  ever  since  Eve  spanked 
Cain  for  unbrotherly  action  toward  Abel, 
and  there  always  will  be  until  the  millen 
nium  —  and  then  there  will  probably  be 
degrees  of  righteousness;  and  to  the  prac 
tical  mind  it  would  seem  but  common  sense 
to  admit  it  and  to  regulate  life  accordingly. 
There  will  always  be  those  who  lead  and 
those  who  are  led,  but  they  should  be 
labelled  in  less  misleading  terms. 
172 


QUALITY  VERSUS  EQUALITY 

The  "working"  class.  I  challenge  the 
monopoly  of  the  adjective.  There  may  be 
in  this  country  a  certain  number  of  people 
who  live  a  leisure  or  idle  life,  but  if  this  be 
true  the  number  is  so  small  as  to  be  negli 
gible,  and  the  term  "leisure"  or  "upper" 
class  is,  therefore,  I  suppose,  applied  to 
those  who  earn  their  living  by  their  brains 
rather  than  by  their  hands.  It  is  really  a 
perfectly  good  way  of  earning  a  living,  al 
though  many  people  deny  it.  If  payment  in 
money  is  the  standard  of  compensation, 
then  brain-work  must  take  rank  far  below 
that  of  manual  labour,  for  not  only  is 
it  literally  as  well  as  comparatively  less 
highly  paid,  but  the  wage  of  the  class  who 
monopolize  the  title  "working"  is  set  and 
safeguarded  by  an  arbitrary  authority 
which  dictates  not  only  what  the  wage 
shall  be,  but  the  hours  during  which  work 
may  be  done.  The  brain-worker  has  no 
such  security. 

On  the  Friday  afternoon  about  half- past 
three  of  a  very  cold  day  last  winter,  I  was 
careless  enough  to  break  a  large  pane  of 

173 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


glass  in  my  bedroom  window.  Realizing 
that  it  was  growing  late  in  the  day,  I  lost 
no  time  in  telephoning  the  glazier  to  re 
quest  that  he  would  come  up  at  once  and 
replace  it.  He  apologized  profusely,  re 
gretting  in  tearful  accents  that  every  one 
of  his  own  men  was  out,  and  that  he  had 
no  one  to  send.  I  resigned  myself  uncom 
plainingly  to  the  prospect  of  undressing 
and  going  to  bed  in  a  temperature  where 
the  \vater  in  a  vase  of  flowers  was  already 
skimming  over  writh  a  coating  of  ice,  and 
remarked  with  truly  Christian  acceptance 
of  the  inevitable,  "But  you  will  be  sure  to 
send  some  one  the  very  first  thing  in  the 
morning,  won't  you?"  The  reply  came  in 
tones  of  conscious  superiority  -  "  We  don't 
work  on  Saturdays."  And  they  did  n't. 
Friday  afternoon,  all  Saturday  and  Sun 
day,  that  yawning  hole  remained  in  my 
window,  and,  every  other  room  in  the  house 
being  occupied,  for  three  shivering  nights 
and  mornings  I  dressed  and  undressed  in 
that  icy  blast  with  the  cold  of  which  no 
open  fire  nor  furnace  could  compete. 

174 


QUALITY  VERSUS  EQUALITY 

The  hours  of  labour  legalized  by  the 
Government  are  from  8  to  12  A.M.  and 
i  to  5  P.M.,  and  the  strict  observance  of 
this  law  on  the  part  of  our  fellow  citizens 
is  edifying  to  behold.  I  had  a  plumber  at 
work  in  my  bathroom  not  long  ago,  and  I 
watched  with  fascinated  eyes  as  he  played 
little  games  of  magic  with  his  glowing 
poker  and  molten  lead.  True  to  the  ro 
mance  of  fairy  tales,  as  the  clock  struck  the 
witching  hour  of  twelve,  he  dropped  that 
red-hot  poker  with  such  prompt  obedience 
to  its  call  that  it  burned  a  large  and  very 
evil-smelling  hole  in  my  much-prized  new 
linoleum,  to  accomplish  the  purchase  of 
which  I  had  scraped  together  the  pennies 
by  the  wearing  of  my  old  hat  for  the  third 
winter  and  abstention  from  many  thrilling 
movies.  The  plumber  did  not  pay  for  the 
damage,  of  course,  and  I  know  my  place 
quite  too  well  to  have  suggested  it,  but  I 
suspected  later  from  the  size  of  the  bill 
that  he  had  charged  me  the  amount  that 
I  might  have  asked  him  for  damages. 
If  one  is  very  rich,  salvation  from  abso- 

175 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


lute  cataclysm  may  occasionally  be  ob 
tained  by  payment  for  over-time,  and  this 
is  a  point  upon  which  the  Government 
legislates  very  strictly.  The  men  who  have 
selected  trade  as  their  calling  in  life  may, 
under  certain  circumstances  and  if  they 
so  wish,  work  over-time,  but  for  this  the 
Government  is  very  particular  to  insist 
that  they  shall  be  paid  extra,  frequently 
dictating  what  the  amount  shall  be.  This 
is  fair  and  as  it  should  be,  and  perhaps  it 
may  be  excusable  at  this  point  to  make  a 
little  excursion  into  apparent  irrelevancy 
upon  the  subject  of  "  tips,"  a  custom  which 
I  stoutly  defend.  If  I  go  to  visit  friends, 
their  servants  are  obliged  to  do  work  for 
me  which  is  outside  their  regular  routine 
as  arranged  for  when  they  were  engaged 
and  their  wages  settled,  and  it  is  often 
work  that  is  more  purely  personal  than 
that  involved  in  the  making  of  my  bed  or 
the  dusting  of  my  room.  In  the  days  when 
females  were  buttoned  up  behind  it  was 
very  distinctly  more;  cither  a  long  row  of 
ladies  stood  each  fastening  the  dress  of  the 

176 


QUALITY  VERSUS  EQUALITY 

one  in  front  of  her,  or  else  for  half  an  hour 
before  dinner,  the  maid  fled  in  frenzied 
haste  from  one  room  to  another  in  re 
sponse  to  the  plaintive  requests  issuing 
from  half-opened  doors  that  she  would 
"please  come  and  do  me  up."  This  and 
similar  services  may  very  properly  be  re 
garded  as  over-time  work,  and  I  do  not 
want  to  accept  such  service  without  show 
ing,  by  a  more  convincing  evidence  than 
word  of  mouth,  that  I  appreciate  it.  The 
legitimate  quarrel  with  tipping  is  in  the 
exorbitance  shown  by  those  to  whom  money 
is  no  object  and  by  whose  prodigality  of 
acknowledgement  all  economic  balance  is 
upset  and  scattered  to  the  four  winds  of 
heaven.  This  is  not  fair,  either  as  regards 
economic  balance  nor  toward  those  who 
are  unable  to  give  so  largely;  nor  do  I  be 
lieve  that  it  meets  with  the  unqualified 
approval  of  those  who  receive  it.  I  lunched 
at  a  restaurant  not  long  ago  at  a  table  next 
that  occupied  by  a  man  who  was  enter 
taining  two  women.  He  had  a  most  elab 
orate  luncheon,  including  champagne,  of 
177 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


which  only  one  glass  apiece  was  drunk  out 
of  each  bottle,  a  fresh  supply  being  req 
uisitioned  after  each  drink,  and  he  tipped 
the  waiter  with  a  twenty  dollar  bill. 
The  waiter  did  not  happen  to  be  a  friend 
of  mine  and  I  had  no  conversation  with 
him,  but  it  was  entirely  unnecessary;  the 
expression  of  his  face  spoke  more  clearly 
than  a  whole  dictionaryful  of  words.  If  I 
could  command  such  an  expression  of 
wordless  contempt,  I  should  treasure  it  as 
an  invaluable  asset.  Reasonable  tipping  is 
first  cousin  to  payment  for  over-time  work, 
and  as  such  should  be  acknowledged,  but 
why  draw  the  line  as  to  what  class  of  work 
should  be  paid  over-time  and  what  should 
not?  Why  should  the  Government  protect 
the  over-time  pay  of  one  class  and  not  of 
another? 

The  clearest  illustration,  perhaps,  of  this 
unjust  legislation  is  shown  in  the  line 
drawn  between  the  profession  of  archi 
tecture,  which  is  labour  with  the  brain, 
and  the  manual  labour  of  trades  necessary 
for  building,  both  of  which  are  interde- 

178 


QUALITY  VERSUS  EQUALITY 

pendent  and  the  one  as  indispensable  as 
the  other.  The  profession  of  architecture 
does  not,  as  so  vast  a  majority  of  people 
believe,  consist  solely  in  drawing  pretty 
pictures  and  making  straight  lines  to  go 
in  different  directions  on  paper.  In  addi 
tion  to  this  ability,  the  true  architect  must 
have  a  working  knowledge  of  pretty  much 
every  trade  under  heaven.  It  is  impera 
tive  that  he  should  know  good  carpentry, 
brick-laying,  and  plumbing;  of  soils  and 
gardening;  about  plastering,  painting,  and 
electricity ;  in  short,  the  architect  does  not, 
as  is  generally  supposed,  build  a  house  by 
the  simple  expedient  of  drawing  a  few 
plans,  and  sitting  down,  like  a  hatching 
hen,  to  watch  somebody  else  do  the  work. 
The  acquisition  of  the  knowledge  necessary 
to  this  end  means  years  of  work,  study, 
and  experience,  and  the  production  of  the 
working  drawings  alone,  "precept  upon 
precept,  line  upon  line,"  accounting  for 
every  square  inch  of  every  different  ma 
terial  used  in  the  construction  of  a  build 
ing,  is  a  labour  but  vaguely  understanded 

179 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


of  the  multitude.  Very  frequently,  and 
especially  upon  Government  work  and  in 
war-times,  over-time  work  is  required,  and 
for  this  the  Government  legislates  very 
strictly  indeed.  The  department  which  de 
mands  for  over-time  work  the  payment 
of  time  and  a  half  to  all  mechanics  and 
labourers,  demands  with  equal  explicitness 
that,  to  professional  employees,  NO  addi 
tional  payment  shall  be  made.  Why  this 
class  distinction?  Far  be  it  from  me  to 
put  my  fingers  into  public  pies-- I  have 
quite  enough  private  ones  in  the  baking; 
but  I  see  no  reason  why  a  share  in  this  pie 
does  not  rightfully  belong  to  me.  It  is  not 
fair  that  in  the  fixing  of  payment  for  labour, 
either  brain  or  manual,  the  one  who  pays 
that  price  should  have  no  voice  in  the  set 
ting  of  it.  For  many  years  we  have  been 
fighting  corporations  as  an  evil  that  a 
democracy  will  not  endure,  yet  the  labour 
unions  (excellent  institutions  when  prop 
erly  handled)  have  been  so  upheld  by  the 
Government  that  they  have  become  the 
closest  kind  of  corporation,  dictating  with 

1 80 


QUALITY  VERSUS  EQUALITY 

an  arrogance,  strongly  suggestive  of  the 
late  ruler  of  Germany,  just  what  price 
millions  of  people  outside  that  corpora 
tion  shall  pay  for  work  done  for  them,  and 
without  the  provision  of  which  work  the 
working-man  could  not  live. 

Moreover,  I  am  not  free  to  employ,  if  I  pre 
fer,  a  workman  outside  that  organization ;  if 
I  do  so,  the  workman  and  I  both  suffer.  Also, 
I  am  obliged  to  pay  the  same  price  for  bad 
work  as  for  good.  Not  only  must  I  pay  for 
a  piece  of  work  which  is  so  poor  that  it 
must  be  done  over  again,  and  I  therefore 
pay  twice,  but  a  skilled  workman  must 
stand  by  and  see  a  boy,  who  has  not  yet 
learned  the  rudiments  of  his  trade,  paid 
the  same  wage  as  he,  himself,  deserves.  He 
may  want  to  work  well  and  to  work  when 
he  wishes,  but  that  close  corporation  steps 
in  and  says,  "You  shall  work  only  when 
and  how  we  choose."  Yet  we  cackle  and 
crow  that  we  are  a  "free"  nation.  If  this 
is  democracy,  I  feel  that  I  might  be  able  to 
appreciate  the  advantages  of  a  monarchy. 

The  evils  of  such  legislation  are  patent  - 
181 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


or  should  be  —  to  the  least  observant.  For 
one  thing  by  this  limiting  of  the  character 
and  quality  of  labour,  it  sorely  discourages 
all  good,  efficient  work  and  sublimely  en 
courages  the  idle  and  incompetent,  and  it 
is  in  just  this  latter  class  where  the  evil 
is  most  clearly  shown  to  lie.  The  skilled 
workman  has  a  certain  pride  in  his  work 
and  in  his  attitude  toward  it,  but  the  com 
mon  labourer  works  for  his  pay  only.  The 
worse  he  does  it,  and  the  less  energy  he  puts 
into  it,  the  greater  his  gain,  and  the  fact 
that  by  this  attitude  he  is  responsible  for 
long  delay  and  additional  expense  to  others, 
including  the  Government  which  protects 
and  encourages  him  in  it,  is  a  matter  of 
perfect  indifference  to  him  and,  apparently, 
to  the  Government  as  well. 

Already  I  must  wait,  at  whatever  cost, 
from  Friday  till  Monday  to  have  certain 
kinds  of  work  done,  and  few  men  would 
work  after  five  o'clock  without  over-time 
pay  if  it  were  to  save  a  life;  now  I  am  told 
that  this  "labouring"  class  is  to  have 
a  six-hour  day  with  eight-hour  payment. 

182 


QUALITY  VERSUS  EQUALITY 

Where  do  I  come  in  on  that  arrangement? 
With  all  my  heart  and  soul  I  believe  that 
the  man  who  labours  should  be  paid  and 
well  paid,  but  with  equal  conviction  I  be 
lieve  (i)  that  payment  should  be  just,  and 
(2)  that  it  should  not  be  confined  arbitra 
rily  to  one  class  of  labour.  I  do  not  doubt 
that  there  was  a  time  when  the  man  who 
worked  with  his  hands  was  underpaid  (of 
the  extent  of  his  "oppression"  I  am  for 
several  reasons  a  bit  sceptical),  but  no 
sane  man  can  pretend  that  the  situation  is 
not  changed,  and  it  is  now  a  useless  waste 
of  time  and  energy  to  kick  so  unequivo 
cally  a  "dead  horse"  as  that  of  the  "op 
pressed"  working-man.  That  the  skilled 
and  unskilled  workman,  for  instance,  should 
be  paid  the  same  wage  is  unjust  in  the  ex 
treme,  and  that  the  skilled  workman  does 
not  kick  so  alive  and  thoroughly  vicious  a 
"horse"  only  shows  that  while  he  once 
laboured  under  the  possibly  just  convic 
tion  that  he  was  oppressed  by  certain  peo 
ple  whom  he  considered  to  be  in  a  different 
class  from  himself,  he  is  now,  apparently, 

183 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


quite  unconscious  that  he  is  being  in 
sulted  and  cheated  by  those  of  his  very  own 
crowd. 

I  do  not  quarrel  with  the  Government 
nor  with  any  other  body  of  people  who  leg 
islate  to  protect  the  interests  of  any  class 
whatever,  but  I  do  think  it  unfair  that  one 
class  of  worker  should  be  defended  at  the 
expense  of  another.  The  wages  of  the  man 
ual  labourer  have  not  only  never  been  so 
high,  but  are  rising  from  week  to  week  - 
a  matter  for  rejoicing;  but  the  wage  of  the 
professional  man  is  not  one  penny  the 
more.  Is  it  not  a  natural  question  on  my 
part  to  ask  why  my  Government,  who 
promises  me  freedom  and  equality,  should 
permit  this?  Why  must  everything  be 
made  easy  for  one  class  to  the  exclusion  of 
another?  Why  must  all  those  processions 
pass  through  the  streets  inhabited  by  an 
other  class  of  labour,  and  not  through  those 
lived  in  by  mine?  I  revert  to  that  procession 
because  it  seems  to  me  symbolic  of  the  fact 
that  a  whole  lot  of  perfectly  good  sympathy 
is  being  wasted  upon  entirely  the  wrong 
184 


QUALITY  VERSUS  EQUALITY 

lot  of  people.  The  burden  of  underpayment 
and  oppression  is  now  being  laid  upon  that 
class  of  people  whose  brains  provide  labour 
for  those  who  work  with  their  hands,  and 
if,  under  this  oppression,  brains  "go  on 
strike,"  it  will  be  a  case  of  killing  the  goose 
that  lays  the  golden  eggs. 

Comfortable  as  it  may  have  been  for  the 
rich  in  the  days  when  manual  labour  was 
underpaid,  no  decent  man  or  woman  has 
any  desire  to  return  to  that  time.  I  am  not 
a  socialist,  and  there  is  nothing  in  this 
world  in  which  I  have  so  profound  a  dis 
belief  as  in  the  doctrine  of  equality  in  any 
and  every  sense  in  which  it  can  be  used; 
for  one  reason,  because  I  have  never  yet 
found  any  human  being  who  desired  it. 
The  Socialists  shriek  for  equality,  but 
what  they  strive  for  is  ascendancy.  If, 
however,  with  the  cry  for  Equality  there 
should  be  coupled  the  demand  for  Quality, 
the  principle  might  possibly  be  one  to  offer 
as  a  working  basis  upon  which  to  found  a 
better  understanding  between  the  people 
of  different  qualifications;  but  quality  of 

185 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


work,  manners,  morals,  or  character  meets 
with  but  scanty  attention  in  these  days 
when  the  world  is  obsessed  with  the  one 
standard  of  gain  for  money  and  of  money. 
I  have  never  yet  heard  of  a  body  of  men 
who  went  on  strike  because  the  quality  of 
their  work  was  not  appreciated,  but  I  offer 
the  suggestion  to  the  "walking  delegate" 
as  a  new  idea,  certainly  more  novel  and 
one  better  worth  the  suffering  and  incon 
venience  entailed  than  their  objects  here 
tofore.  I  should  also  take  pleasure  in  mak 
ing  a  few  observations  to  the  effect  that 
Equality  plus  Quality  would  impart  to 
democracy  a  stability  in  which,  under 
present  conditions,  one  feels  it  to  be  a  bit 
lacking. 

With  all  that  is  to  be  regretted  in  the 
standards  of  to-day,  the  wrorld  is  unques 
tionably  striving  for  a  better  and  higher 
standard  to  which  it  will  eventually  attain. 
When  Quality  of  service  shall  be  in  Equal 
ity  with  the  rise  of  compensation;  when 
the  Quality  of  man's  honour  and  honesty 
are  on  an  Equality  of  mutual  magnanim- 
186 


QUALITY  VERSUS  EQUALITY 

ity ;  when  we  have  learned  that  if  we  take 
care  of  the  Quality  the  Equality  will  take 
care  of  itself,  we  shall  have  realized  a  de 
mocracy  that  is  as  yet  but  a  loyal  dream. 


X 

DIFFERENCES  AND  DISTINCTIONS 


X 

DIFFERENCES  AND  DISTINCTIONS 

I  LIKE  dinner-parties  because  I  almost 
always  find  somebody  who  does  not 
agree  with  me  about  something,  and  the 
ensuing  conversation  is  apt  to  be  lively 
enough  to  send  me  home  feeling  mentally 
quite  frisky.  I  attended  one  not  long  ago, 
however,  where  the  difference  in  opinion 
was  indubitable  enough,  but  from  which  I 
returned  much  depressed. 

I  was  escorted  into  the  dining-room  by 
an  agreeable,  though  slightly  aggressive, 
gentleman,  who  cheerily  began  the  con 
versation  by  the  remark,  "Say"  (I  regret 
to  state  that  he  is  a  Bostonian)  "Say,  I 
don't  think  much  of  these  Britishers  of 
yours." 

I  did  not  quite  understand  why  Great 
Britain  and  all  her  Colonies  should  be 
planted  upon  the  shoulders  of  me,  a  per 
fectly  innocent  American,  but  I  accepted 
the  charge  unmurmuringly,  and  enquired 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


why  his  opinion  of  them  was  so  modest. 
His  reply  was  of  a  length  that  enabled  me 
to  get  halfway  through  my  soup,  but  the 
gist  of  it  seemed  to  be  that  they  gave  them 
selves  "such  everlasting  airs."  I  replied 
that  that  was  a  perfectly  horrid  trait  (and 
I  did  not  pronounce  it  "tray,"  either),  and 
that  to  a  modest  and  self-effacing  nation 
like  our  own,  it  was  particularly  exasper 
ating. 

"I'm  dead  tired,"  he  continued,  "of 
having  them  come  over  here  all  dolled  up 
in  their  Sam  Browne  belts,  and  telling  us 
what  they  did  in  France,  and  how  they 
fought  in  Flanders,  and  how  much  their 
fleet  had  accomplished;  one  would  think 
they  had  won  the  War  entirely  by  them 
selves."  'That  is  queer,"  I  replied,  "be 
cause  every  single  Englishman  I  have  seen 
since  the  War  began,  has  told  me  himself 
that  he  had  done  nothing." 

I  dislike  telling  long  stories  to  men  be 
cause  they  so  much  prefer  telling  them  to 
me,  so  I  refrained  from  recounting  to  my 
companion  the  opinions  expressed  by  the 
192 


DIFFERENCES  AND  DISTINCTIONS 

Captain  of  the when  he  dined  with 

me.  It  had  just  been  broken  to  him  that  he 
would  have  to  make  a  speech  in  Symphony 
Hall  the  next  night,  and  his  remarks  were 
not  printable  in  their  entirety.  His  temper 
was  irretrievably  mislaid,  and  he  growled 
like  the  proverbial  (English)  bear.  He 
"didn't  like  makin'  speeches  one  little 
bit";  he  "would  have  to  tell  about"  what 
he  had  done  in  the  War  -  "rotten  idea"; 
he  "hadn't  done  anything  but  the  day's 
work,  anyway."  This  last  statement  could 
not  be  regarded  as  strictly  truthful.  I  hap 
pened  to  know,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  that  he 
had  done  so  preposterously  more  than  his 
"day's  work"  that,  had  he  belonged  to  a 
labour  union,  he  would  have  been  dis 
ciplined  to  a  certainty.  I  did  not  say  all 
this,  but  I  thought  it,  and  before  I  had 
time  to  invent  some  harmless  reply  the 
comfortably  portly  person  on  my  other 
side  put  his  oar  into  the  troubled  waters  of 
the  conversation. 

"Didn't  I  hear,"  he  said,  "that  much 
of  the  friction  between  the  American  and 

193 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


English  privates  was  because  the  Tommies 
speak  the  better  English,  and  that  our  men 
considered  them  to  be  'putting  on  side?" 

"I  don't  care  a-  —about  their  gram 
mar,"  answered  the  originator  of  this  har 
monious  conversation,  "but  their  accent 
is  enough  to  drive  anybody  to  drink  —  if 
there  was  any  drink  left  to  be  driven  to," 
he  added  vindictively. 

I  opened  my  mouth  to  reply,  but  shut  it 
up  again  quickly,  mindful  of  a  recent  re 
mark  made  by  my  favourite  nephew. 

He  had  sat,  quite  polite  and  well-be 
haved,  throughout  the  call  of  an  English 
friend,  and  had  appeared  much  interested 
in  the  conversation.  When  the  family  were 
collected  at  the  dinner-table,  he  remarked 
elegantly,  "Gosh,  but  you  ought  to  have 
been  here  this  afternoon  when  Mr.  Blank 
was  calling.  Auntie  got  her  best  English 
accent  out  of  the  moth-balls  where  she 
packs  it  away,  and  it  was  so  thick  you 
could  cut  it  with  a  knife." 

This  slight  pause  for  self-restraint  had 
given  me  time  to  suspect  that  the  con- 

194 


DIFFERENCES  AND  DISTINCTIONS 

versational  atmosphere  was  in  danger  of 
becoming  overheated,  so  I  thought  it  wise 
to  change  the  subject  to  national  rather 
than  international  affairs.  Later  I  came 
home  feeling  distinctly  low  in  my  mind 
because  of  the  too  evident  anti-British 
feelings  of  my  dinner-party  neighbours.  I 
undressed  and  crawled  dismally  into  bed, 
where  I  curled  myself  around  a  hot-water 
bottle  and  gave  way  to  unbridled  gloom. 

It  is  regrettable  that  so  few  people  ap 
preciate  the  soothing  qualities  of  that 
humble  utensil.  I  am  quite  sure  that  Mr. 
Lloyd  George  would  be  more  amenable 
and  Mr.  Wilson  less  pernicketty  if  they 
would  both  adopt  its  use.  After  a  short 
half -hour  of  worry,  its  gentle  warmth  per 
meated  even  to  my  brain,  and  I  began  to 
meditate  upon  the  discord  between  the 
two  countries  with  less  troubled  mind. 
Even  enfolded  within  its  genial  glow,  I 
could  not  deny  that  the  two  nationalities 
are  tremendously  different,  but  it  began  to 
dawn  upon  me  that  the  reason  for  the  differ 
ence  is  because  they  are  so  exactly  alike. 

195 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


We  Americans  love  our  own  country  so 
dearly  that  we  are  always  going  away  from 
it,  in  order  to  enjoy  the  sensation  of  getting 
back  and  feeling  how  much  superior  we  are 
to  any  other  nation.  Being  an  adaptable 
people,  we  are  quick  to  appreciate  the 
beauty  of  foreign  countries,  the  novelty 
of  their  dissimilar  scenery  and  architec 
ture,  and  the  fascination  of  an  unfamiliar 


tongue. 


We  go  to  France  and  express  our  affection 
for  her;  we  go  to  Italy  and  are  conscious  of 
our  love  for  her;  we  go  to  Egypt  and  stand 
in  wonder  before  her  past;  we  used  to  go 
to  Germany  to  admire  her  efficiency  and 
wrestle  with  her  language,  but  we  don't 
any  more.  At  the  end  of  our  trip  \ve  make  a 
bee-line  for  England  to  get  aboard  ship  for 
the  States,  and  find  ourselves  —  at  home! 
The  same  scenery,  similar  architecture, 
familiar  habits  and  customs,  and,  above  all, 
an  identical  language.  Of  course  it  seems 
queer  that  they  should  differ  from  us  in 
so  many  ways  —  which  they  don't,  really, 
except  in  trivialities. 

196 


DIFFERENCES  AND  DISTINCTIONS 

Everybody  knows  that  trivialities  exas 
perate  people,  especially  men ;  my  husband 
and  my  favourite  nephew,  for  instance. 
One  would  think  they  were  double-dis 
tilled  femininity  by  the  way  they  quarrel 
over  their  clothes.  The  F.N.  loathes  Eng 
lish  clothes,  and  wears  only  the  American 
variety,  fitted  in  at  the  waist,  and  economi 
cal  as  to  material  at  the  top  of  the  trousers. 
My  husband  tells  him  that  any  man  who  is 
obliged  to  button  the  lowest  button  of  his 
waistcoat  in  order  to  conceal  his  shirt  is 
a  man  improperly  dressed.  On  the  other 
hand,  my  husband  resolutely  refuses  to 
wear  any  clothes  at  all  unless  they  are 
made  in  London,  and  the  F.N.  retorts  that 
he'd  rather  show  a  bit  of  nice  white  shirt 
than  have  to  button  his  back  collar  button 
to  the  top  of  his  pants.  Both  of  them  are 
supposed  to  have  intelligent  views  and 
opinions  upon  international  affairs,  but  as 
a  real  matter  of  fact,  they  do  not  become 
half  so  infuriated  over  the  doings  of  the 
respective  National  Governments  as  they 
do  over  the  "set"  of  their  respective  per- 
197 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


sonal  pants.  They  appear  to  me  to  be  much 
like  all  other  men. 

The  use  of  terms  as  applied  to  wearing 
apparel  is  also  graphically  illustrative  of 
distinction  minus  difference  in  the  two 
countries.  Individually,  I  prefer  trousers 
to  pants  (I  prefer  them  to  petticoats,  for 
that  matter),  but  as  between  two  demo 
cratic  countries,  surely  one  may  be  per 
mitted  one's  little  personal  predilections. 

I  spent  one  summer  in  a  small  English 
town  where  the  natives  laughed  consum- 
edly  when  I  remarked  innocently  that  I 
had  been  "to  the  dry-goods  store  to  buy  a 
spool  of  thread,"  because,  they  assured  me 
carefully,  what  it  should  be  called  was  "a 
reel  of  cotton."  Similarly,  when  I  called  on 
a  friend,  and  found  tied  to  the  doorbell  a 
neat  little  card  bearing  the  information 
that  the  parlour-maid  was  slightly  deaf, 
and  that  if  the  doorbell  was  not  answered 
promptly,  would  the  caller  please  step  in 
side  and  ring  the  dinner-bell,  I  sat  down  on 
that  doorstep  and  laughed  till  I  cried. 

It  is  more  or  less  the  same  with  our  slang, 
198 


DIFFERENCES  AND  DISTINCTIONS 

and  whether  the  English  or  American  va 
riety  is  the  more  choice  and  elegant  is  a 
matter  of  taste.  I  only  know  that  neither  of 
us  can  use  the  other's  with  that  nicety  of 
correctness  expressive  of  its  true  perfection. 
One  year  I  was  visiting  some  English 
people  in  a  cathedral  town,  where  I  had 
made  many  pleasant  friends.  Passing  down 
the  street  one  day,  I  fell  joyfully  into  the 
arms  of  three  Boston  friends,  who  were  there 
for  only  the  proverbial  American  day  and 
night.  One  has  friends  and  friends ;  some  of 
them  are  of  a  variety  that  one  is  particu 
larly  proud  to  show  off  to  the  English,  and 
these  were  of  this  species.  I  promptly  sent 
a  message  to  the  Bishop's  Palace  to  ask  if 
I  might  bring  them  in  to  afternoon  tea,  and 
we  were  cordially  welcomed.  One  of  the 
three  was  a  brother  of  the  other  two,  and 
was  possessed  of  charming  manners  and 
engaging  ways.  As  I  introduced  him  to  our 
hostess,  my  American  heart  swelled  with 
pride,  and  I  felt  that  she  would  at  last 
know  what  Boston  could  produce  when  it 
really  tried.  He  returned  his  empty  cup  to 
199 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


the  tea-table,  and  was  hospitably  pressed 
by  his  hostess  to  have  another. 

'Thank  you,"  said  my  Boston  friend, 
with  his  most  engaging  smile  and  a  beauti 
ful  bow,  "I  think  I  will  stand  on  one  cup." 

Our  hostess  looked  helplessly  back  and 
forth  between  my  friend  and  the  tea-cup, 
and  I  retired  hastily,  leaving  my  Boston 
friend  to  get  himself  out  of  the  difficulty  in 
his  own  charming  way. 

One  may  trust  most  American  men  to 
extricate  themselves  adroitly  from  any 
similar  difficulties  in  private  conversation, 
especially  with  a  woman,  but  when  it  comes 
to  public  speaking,  I  listen  with  about  the 
same  degree  of  nervous  apprehension  to 
the  speakers  of  one  nation  as  of  the  other. 
We  are  a  nation  of  born  speakers,  and  we 
not  only  appreciate  ourselves  in  that  line, 
but  we  also  appreciate  it  in  others.  I  fre 
quently  feel,  however,  that  neither  English 
nor  American  speakers  are  invariably 
happy  in  expressing  themselves. 

One  English  speaker  was  here  not  long 
ago,  the  most  earnest  purpose  of  his  soul 
200 


DIFFERENCES  AND  DISTINCTIONS 

being  to  unite,  by  bonds  of  perfect  under 
standing,  the  feelings  of  the  two  countries. 
His  chief  argument  was  that  England  could 
not  possibly  be  inimical  to  the  States  be 
cause  she  knew  so  little  about  them.  He 
alluded  particularly  to  our  "Boston  Tea- 
Party,"  and  assured  us  that  few,  if  any 
body,  in  England  had  ever  heard  of  it. 
I  am  not  a  Bostonian,  but  I  am  very  proud 
of  that  episode,  and  my  little  feelings  were 
quite  hurt. 

That  attitude  of  knowing  nothing  and 
caring  less  about  what  happens  in  the 
world  outside  their  own,  particular  baili 
wick  is  one  of  England's  most  valuable 
assets;  one  that  all  my  life  I  have  endeav 
oured  assiduously  but  unsuccessfully  to  ac 
quire.  A  mind  so  impervious  to  other  peo 
ple's  business  is  one  source  of  England's 
placid  strength,  and  it  ought  to  make  them 
especially  popular  with  us,  for  I  defy  any 
body  who  has  followed  the  vicissitudes  of 
the  Treaty  and  the  League  of  Nations,  to 
deny  that  "None  of  our  business"  is  the 
watchword  of  our  nation.  But  never  mind; 
201 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


we  will  "grow  up"  some  day  to  know  bet 
ter;  and  meantime  it  is  not  only  the  Eng 
lishman  who  says  things  that  he  might  wish 
he  had  expressed  differently. 

A  well-known  British  officer  spoke  in 
Boston  one  night,  and  was  introduced  to 
a  very  large  audience  by  a  pure  American 
-  that  is,  as  pure  as  we  make  them.  The 
introduction  was  not  of  that  brevity  which 
is  quoted  as  perfection,  and  I  began  to  be 
nervous  before  he  had  reached  the  end  of 
his  first  ten  minutes.  Later,  when  he  an 
nounced  with  emphasis  that  "WE"  could 
not  have  won  the  War  if  it  had  not  been  for 
France;  "WE"  could  not  have  won  the  War 
if  it  had  not  been  for  the  Belgians,  and 
(with  that  British  officer  at  his  elbow)  "WE" 
could  not  have  won  the  War  without  Eng 
land,  my  nervous  system  suffered  a  col 
lapse  from  which  it  has  not  yet  recovered. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  did  not  in  the  least 
mean  what  he  implied,  as  was  evident  by 
the  context.  What  he  wished  to  express  was 
that  the  War  could  not  have  been  won  by 
the  Allies  had  not  each  country  rendered 
202 


DIFFERENCES  AND  DISTINCTIONS 

its  special  service  in  its  special  place.  One 
must  admit,  however,  that  there  was  not 
much  to  choose  between  the  Englishman 
and  the  American  so  far  as  tactfulness  is 
concerned.  I  think  the  palm  for  that  particu 
lar  gift  must  be  given  to  one  especial  man. 
An  Englishman  is  never  more  soul-satis 
fying  than  when  he  is  a  Scotchman,  and 
the  peculiarly  judicious  admixture  to  whom 
I  allude  has  done  more  to  translate  to  one 
another  the  two  countries  than  anything 
outside  a  petticoat  that  I  am  acquainted 
with.  The  hereditary  right  to  an  abbrevi 
ated  excuse  for  that  article  of  clothing  may 
account  for  his  tact  and  discretion.  In 
speaking  here  on  one  occasion,  he  admitted 
modestly  that  the  American  boys  in  Eng 
land  may  have  learned  some  things  to  their 
advantage,  and  he  stated  unequivocally 
that  the  English  boys  had  learned  a  great 
deal  from  ours;  one  of  them  being  that  "an 
American  loves  and  is  proud  of  his  country, 
and  is  not  ashamed  to  say  so."  Nobody 
wholly  divorced  from  a  petticoat  could  pos 
sibly  have  said  that  so  prettily. 
203 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


To  return  to  the  dinner-bell  and  the 
spool  of  thread,  from  which,  hen-like,  I 
have  strayed,  I  do  not  feel  in  the  least 
apologetic  for  my  own  use  of  the  vernacu 
lar,  nor  am  I  making  fun  of  a  perfectly 
straightforward  way  of  simplifying  a  do 
mestic  situation;  they  are  both  perfectly 
good  methods  of  expression.  They  do,  how 
ever,  serve  admirably  to  illustrate  some  of 
the  differences  of  ways,  manners,  and  cus 
toms  which  between  the  two  countries  are 
a  great  deal  harder  to  understand,  and, 
sometimes,  more  difficult  to  excuse,  than 
the  fundamental  matters  in  which,  thank 
God,  they  do  not  so  often  clash.  Diplo 
macy,  commerce,  international  law  are,  of 
course,  of  some  slight  importance,  but  even 
the  aforesaid  hot-water  bottle  did  not  fur 
nish  me  with  sufficient  brains  to  argue 
about  them,  even  with  myself  -  -  the  only 
opponent  I  have  ever  been  able  to  con 
vince.  Privately,  I  do  not  think  they 
amount  to  much,  anyway.  I  frankly  doubt 
if  I  am  alone  in  a  happy  ignorance  of  in 
ternational  affairs  that  prevents  me  from 

204 


DIFFERENCES  AND  DISTINCTIONS 

lying  awake  o'  nights  worrying  over  them, 
but  I  know  I  have  plenty  of  good  company 
in  caring  a  lot  if  my  people  mistake  British 
shyness  and  gaucherie  for  "  everlasting 
airs,"  or  the  British,  not  knowing  us  very 
well,  imagine  that  I  and  my  people  eat 
with  our  knives  or  are  unenlightened  as  to 
the  advantages  of  the  daily  bath.  I  am  in 
clined  to  think  that  it  is  pretty  fairly  im 
portant  for  us  English-speaking  nations  to 
stand  very  closely  together  for  the  next 
century  or  two,  and  if  we  are  to  be  perpetu 
ally  spatting  because,  metaphorically,  they 
call  a  reel  of  cotton  what  we  call  a  spool  of 
thread,  it  would  be  singularly  unintelligent 
on  the  part  of  both  of  us.  They  think  we 
are  queer,  and  we  know  they  are ;  it  would 
seem  common  sanse  to  let  it  go  at  that. 

One  of  the  matters  in  which  the  English 
are  apt  to  be  mistaken  with  regard  to  the 
United  States  is  our  geography.  Person 
ally,  I  am  not  able  to  resent  it  because  I  am 
not  very  strong  on  that  science  myself,  and 
also  because  I  think  we  must  allow  that  we 
do  cover  a  rather  large  portion  of  the  map 

205 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


to  commit  to  memory.  A  very  dear  old 
English  friend  was  immensely  interested 
when  we  first  met,  to  learn  that  we  came 
from  America ;  when  he  heard  that  we  lived 
in  Boston  (which  he  had  ascertained  was 
not  in  South  America)  he  became  actually 
excited.  He  wanted  to  know  if  we  had  ever 
met  his  brother  who  lived  in  Keokuk.  The 
only  defence  I  can  make  of  such  ignorance 
is  that  a  short  time  ago  I  went  upstairs  and 
asked  of  my  deputy-grandson  (aged  two 
weeks),  his  special  attendant,  his  mother, 
and  two  other  perfectly  good  people,  the 
following  questions:  "In  what  country  is 
Biarritz?  In  what  county  is  situated  the 
cathedral  town  of  Canterbury?  and,  What 
State  proudly  boasts  the  possession  of  Oil 
City?"  Not  one  of  them  could  answer  a 
single  one  of  the  questions;  not  even  the 
"Deputy,"  who  is  the  wisest  of  us  all.  After 
the  above  exhibition  of  ignorance  on  the 
part  of  my  personal  friends  and  fellow  citi 
zens,  it  is  only  decent  on  my  part  to  state 
that  I,  myself,  last  week  addressed  a  letter 
to  "Detroit,  Mississippi." 

206 


DIFFERENCES  AND  DISTINCTIONS 

The  few  people  who,  twenty  years  ago, 
served  afternoon  tea  here,  were  regarded 
as  "putting  on  side,"  but  we  have  become 
so  far  infected  by  this  effeminacy  that, 
now  a  days,  it  is  the  general  custom.  I  have 
heard  a  great  many  Americans  jeer  because 
the  English  officers  in  the  trenches  de 
manded  their  afternoon  tea  just  as  much  as 
if  they  were  at  home.  I  do  not  wish  to  be 
considered  too  excessively  pro-British,  but 
really,  it  would  seem  to  me  reasonable  to 
let  a  man  have  pretty  much  anything  he 
wanted  under  those  circumstances.  I  can 
not  feel  that  there  is  a  distinguishable  dif 
ference  between  tea  in  the  trenches,  which 
was  their  day's  work,  and  tea  in  the  offices 
of  two  or  three  business  firms,  where  I 
know,  from  personal  experience,  it  is  served 
for  the  office  force  every  day.  (I  know  also 
of  one  man  who  provides  an  opera  ticket 
for  his  office  force,  to  be  used  in  turn  once 
a  week  throughout  the  season.  I  consider 
this  the  apotheosis  of  Boston.)  Both  seem 
to  me  entirely  appropriate  places  in  which 
to  serve  that  comforting  beverage,  for  both 

207 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


forces  are  doing  a  work  which  needs  nour 
ishment,  and  there  is  n't  a  man  alive  with 
whom  an  empty  stomach  is  not  accompa 
nied  by  a  "cameelious  hump." 

Then,  too,  our  customs  differ.  The  Eng 
lish  engaged  girl  marks  her  possessions  with 
the  name  or  initials  which  she  is  to  bear 
in  the  future.  Our  girls,  in  contemplating 
what  an  emigrant  once  called  "committing 
a  matrimony,"  mark  all  their  silver  and 
linen  with  the  initials  of  their  maiden  name; 
the  name  of  a  person  who,  in  a  short  time, 
will  no  longer  exist.  It  is  charmingly  senti 
mental  to  know  that  we  are  following  an 
old  Dutch  custom;  we  have  so  few  tradi 
tions  that  one  longs  to  cling  to  them  furi 
ously,  but  we  must  in  honesty  admit  that 
it  does  not  seem  very  practical  as  a  means 
of  identification  in  the  wash  or  elsewhere. 
In  fact,  when  my  best  friend  went  off  on 
her  wedding  trip,  with  her  beautiful  new 
portmanteau  marked  loudly  with  her 
maiden  initials,  travelling  sociably  with  that 
of  her  husband  bearing  a  quite  differ 
ent  letter,  it  savoured  slightly  of  impro- 
208 


DIFFERENCES  AND  DISTINCTIONS 

priety.  It  had  also  its  practical  drawbacks, 
for  one  letter  being  B,  and  the  other  W, 
they  were  obliged  to  chase  themselves  from 
one  end  of  every  custom-house  to  the  other 
in  order  to  effect  a  union  between  the  two. 
They  were  rather  unmitigated  Americans, 
these  friends  of  mine,  and  did  not  have  a 
high  opinion  of  English  and  foreign  modes 
of  travel,  which  they  liked  to  compare  with 
our  own.  Personally,  I  have  small  opinion 
of  either  method.  To  travel  in  a  little  nasty, 
draughty  compartment,  with  (usually) 
one's  back  to  the  engine,  or  in  a  bigger 
compartment,  where  the  air  is  vile,  and  the 
seats  of  those  vicious  plush  chairs  drag 
one's  skirts  hind-side-to,  or  one's  trousers 
into  spirals  up  the  backbone,  seems  to  me 
much  of  a  muchness.  If  anybody  is  anti- 
British  on  account  of  the  comparison  in 
travel,  I  shall  feel  more  respect  for  him  if 
he  does  not  mention  it.  I  call  it  a  drawn 
game. 

The  subject  of  titles  is  a  never-ending 
topic  of  joyous  dissension  the  world  over. 
We  do  not  grow  them  here,  unless  one  may 

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PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


count  as  such  the  attainment  of  Judge, 
Colonel,  or  similar  brevet  rank.  I  should 
like,  however,  to  draw  attention  to  the 
frequency  with  which  I  see  gentlemen 
alluded  to  in  our  newspapers  as  "Barber" 
Smith,  or  "Professor"  Getemwell,  or  even 
"Slayer"  Jones,  which  proves  our  funda 
mental  craving  for  the  article.  I  really  do 
not  know  which  nation  is  most  provocative 
of  mirth  on  this  subject.  I  have  heard  just 
exactly  as  many  English  as  Americans  ex 
press  their  contempt  for  "such  rubbish," 
and  declare  with  immense  solemnity  that 
they  would  not  accept  a  title  if  it  was  of 
fered  to  them. 

It  is  usually  a  pretty  safe  statement  to 
make,  especially  in  the  case  of  the  Ameri 
can;  and  though  I  have  known  only  one 
person  (an  Englishman,  by  the  way)  who 
actually  refused  the  offer  when  it  did  come, 
the  effect  of  the  remark  is  truly  impressive. 
I  do  not  believe  it,  of  course.  I  am  much 
more  inclined  to  think  that  in  their  deepest 
and  darkest  hearts  the  individuals  of  both 
nations  adore  them,  only  they  are  not 
210 


DIFFERENCES  AND  DISTINCTIONS 

honest  enough  to  admit  it.  This  is  a  mis 
take.  To  be  gratified  by  so  simple  a  pleas 
ure  is  a  perfectly  incorrupt  and  inoffen 
sive  taste  and  shows  an  artless  mind.  I 
refrain  from  banal  remarks  upon  the  "no 
blesse  oblige"  responsibilities  of  the  article 
in  question. 

As  to  the  respective  merits  of  baseball 
and  cricket,  I  refuse  to  judge.  When  the 
millennium  arrives  and  our  political  differ 
ences  are  dead  and  buried ;  when  our  man 
ners,  morals,  and  minds  are  identical; 
when  the  Lion  and  the  Eagle  have  curled 
up  together  in  urbane  amity;  even  then, 
the  sight  of  a  cricket  bat  and  a  baseball 
bat,  singly  or  together,  will  dissolve  the 
amalgamated  nations  once  more  into  their 
component  parts. 

Never  in  all  this  world  did  I  expect  to 
live  to  see  a  King  of  England  "throw  off" 
for  a  baseball  game ;  but  the  thought  of  an 
American  undertaking  to  witness  a  game  of 
cricket,  from  its  leisurely  beginning  to  its 
long-drawn-out  end,  is  truly  humorous. 
Nothing  could  be  better  illustrative  of  the 

211 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


superficial  differences  in  the  characteristics 
of  the  two  nations  than  in  their  adoption  of 
these  two  sports.  The  English  like  their  ex 
citements  spread  neatly  and  evenly  over  a 
generous  amount  of  time;  we  prefer  ours 
crowded  into  one  or  two  hours  of  delirious 
joy.  They  ride,  drive,  or  motor  to  the 
cricket  field  in  so  tranquil  and  temperate  a 
manner  as  to  make  one  suspect  that  they 
are  out  for  pleasure,  while  we  arrive  at  the 
baseball  field  only  at  the  expense  of  a  free 
fight  -  -  which  is  quite  considered  part  of 
the  fun. 

There  may  be  other  ways  in  which  the 
English  misjudge  the  Americans,  but  in 
none  so  unjustly  as  in  their  desire  for  en 
joyment.  He  believes  the  American  man 
to  be  immersed  in  business  to  the  exclu 
sion  of  every  other  thought;  nothing  could 
be  more  unjust;  in  the  baseball  season, 
anyway.  A  "fan"  wrould  cheerfully  give  up 
his  business,  his  wife,  his  dinner,  and  his 
mother-in-law  before  he  would  allow  any 
thing  to  interfere  with  his  attendance  at 
one  of  the  "big"  games  of  the  season.  I  do 

212 


DIFFERENCES  AND  DISTINCTIONS 

not  know  what  becomes  of  the  business.  It 
is  probably  left  in  the  sorrowing  charge  of 
an  envious  office  boy,  who  cannot  have 
much  to  do,  as  there  is  nobody  left  to  do  it. 
The  excitement  of  the  game  drowns,  for 
the  moment,  every  other  emotion  of  which 
the  human  heart  is  capable.  I  know,  for  I 
have  attended  one.  On  that  occasion  a 
woman  behind  me  fainted  away,  and  a  man 
in  front  of  me  fell  in  an  epileptic  fit,  so  I 
decided  not  to  go  to  any  more.  Could  any 
thing  be  more  antipodean  to  cricket? 

Yet  right  there  the  difference  ends.  They 
are  both  games;  they  are  alike  even  to  the 
extent  of  being  played  with  bats,  balls,  and 
runs;  but  above  all  they  are  alike  in  that 
the  rules  of  both  demand  justice,  fair  play, 
and  honour,  and  in  that  the  judgement  of 
the  people  is  against  those  who  do  not  com 
ply  with  them.  These  are  the  points  that 
really  matter,  and  they  are  also  the  points 
upon  which  the  English-speaking  nations 
are  wholly  and  utterly  at  one. 

I  have  been  told  many  times  the  number 
of  foreign  countries  whose  emigrants  have 

213 


PERSONAL  PREJUDICES 


become  naturalized  Americans ;  I  am  sorry 
that  my  brain  is  too  small  to  retain  the  in 
formation,  because  it  is  distinctly  impres 
sive;  yet  with  all  that  influx  of  alien  races, 
the  United  States  has  never  adopted  other 
than  Saxon  language,  or  standards  of  life 
and  morals ;  not  because  of  leagues  or  votes, 
or  even  of  choice,  but  instinctively  and  as 
a  matter  of  course. 

The  lives  and  customs  of  the  two  nations 
are  not  identical;  the  Governments  differ 
slightly  in  name  and  form  (they  have  a  king 
as  their  titular  head,  we  have  a  college  pro 
fessor  or  a  retired  tradesman,  as  the  case 
may  be) ;  but  when  it  comes  right  down  to 
fundamental  principles,  we  are  scandalously 
alike. 

It  is  not  through  international  laws  or 
diplomacy  or  design  that  England  and  the 
United  States  shall  stand  together  in  the 
years  to  come,  but  simply  and  solely  be 
cause  neither  of  them  can  help  it,  whether 
they  want  to  or  not.  A  like  standard  of 
Honour  and  Honesty,  and  an  identical  goal 
of  Freedom  and  Democracy,  constitute  too 
214 


DIFFERENCES  AND  DISTINCTIONS 

solid  a  foundation  for  the  building-up  of  a 
reformed  world  to  be  easily  undermined. 

If  the  Lion  and  the  Eagle  can  rest  to 
gether  in  peace,  it  is  not  for  their  disrespect 
ful  offspring  to  disturb  them. 


THE  END 


EPILOGUE 

BY  THE  FAVOURITE  NEPHEW 

SO  the  book  is  done;  the  last,  or  perhaps 
only  the  latest,  prejudice  has  been 
published  far  and  wide,  and  the  dragon 
sleeps. 

What  a  dragon  it  is !  Nothing  escapes  her 
roaming  eye,  be  it  never  so  innocent  or 
small.  If  the  baby  cries,  the  fact  is  pounced 
upon  and  the  newest  chapter  of  the  book  is 
headed,  "The  Cruelty  of  Modern  Parents"; 
if  one  is  late  for  a  meal,  one  finds  scattered 
about  the  dragon's  den  neatly  typewritten 
references  to  the  thoughtlessness  of  the 
young.  She  dips  her  claws  into  the  blood 
of  friends  and  enemies  alike,  and,  when 
brought  to  bay,  disappears  into  her  den 
and  becomes  —  an  Early  Victorian  lady  of 
gentle  humility. 

Yet  for  us  who  live  just  outside  the  cave, 
the  dragon  has  her  very  human  side.  I  re 
member  once  coming  home  late  one  after 
noon,  and  as  I  climbed  the  stairs  I  was  sur 
prised  to  hear  above  me  voices  raised  in 
altercation.  The  leading  voice  I  easily  rec- 
217 


EPILOGUE 


ognized  as  that  of  a  maid  who  had  offended 
and  was  being,  quite  properly,  scolded. 
But  somehow  the  maid  was  not  quite  as 
subdued  by  the  little  dragon's  rebuke  as  the 
readers  of  this  book  might  be  led  to  expect. 
Protest  waxed  into  indignation  on  the  part 
of  the  domestic,  indignation  into  invective, 
and  invective  into  vituperation.  Fearing 
the  next  change  might  be  to  personal  vio 
lence,  I  sprang  up  the  stairs.  As  I  reached 
the  last  flight,  at  the  top  of  which  the  bat 
tle  raged,  I  heard  the  quick  patter  of  the 
little  dragon's  feet,  and,  with  a  reiterated 
"That  will  do,  Margaret,  that  will  do," 
she  retired  hurriedly  into  her  favourite 
niece's  room,  slamming  the  door  on  the 
echoes  of  her  opponent's  rage  which  still 
quivered  in  the  blue  air.  Never  shall  I  for 
get  either  the  dignity  of  her  voice  or  her 
hurried  bolt  into  sanctuary. 

You  see  the  dragon  is  human,  after  all. 
We  all  know  and  appreciate  it,  and  though 
we  squirm  when  prodded  with  her  pen,  we 
are  proud  of  the  little  dragon  and  love  her 
even  though  she  kills  us  —  with  laughing. 


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